The Hikari Strikes Back
by Fate VII
Summary: Ryou finally acts on advice about what to do with his yami...Jou's advice. He's not -evil- now, you see, just a different part of the whole. And he's killing Bakura by doing it. [finished]
1. prologue: Tarnished

Fate: Let the games...begin!

Disclaimer: Yeeeeeesss?

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**[prologue] Tarnished**

_...this can't be everything. This can't be all he is. This can't be..._

_I won't let it be._

_But I'll never be able to change it. Never in a million years. What do I do?_

_...he doesn't love me._

_iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou..._

_I will do anything to make you love me. Anything to make you beg to love me. Anything._

_Anything._

_Anything..._

_...why am I thinking this?_

Bakura Ryou sat up quickly with a gasp, falling out of bed. His heart was racing, sweat beaded across his forehead and stung in the cuts on his face, and his breath was coming and going oddly.

_...just a dream._

_This will never change. Go back to sleep and dream, Ryou. Dream of what will never be._

_I love you..._

His eyes fell on the shape huddled in a corner.

_Why is he in here?_

He drew his knees up to his chest, eyes riveted on the figure curled in the shadows.

_To dream is to love is to fall is to lose is to be conquered..._

[-]

My name is Ryou Bakura. I'm a Monster World extraordinaire, social outcast, and all-around shit-out-of-luck teenaged boy. And right now, I'm dragging myself down the street with a black eye, a twisted ankle, and a fraction of my normal amount of sanity. And I am madly, wildly, and painfully in love with an undead boy from five thousand years ago who happens to live in my head and, on off days, throw heavy objects at my face.

I hit my head on the table and wrenched my ankle out from under me this morning, and then I ran. He didn't know I got hurt. And he wouldn't care, either. That's why I'm out here. He wouldn't care one bit except where I can't see. And I don't want to see that on his face again.

I hate that painful, crazy mishmash of exasperation and annoyance and anger and disgust and confusion and fear and stop looking at me...

I hate it with a mad passion that I don't understand. I'm a medieval person, I suppose. I hate and love simply and easily and for my whole life and at first sight. It's all so easy and it's all so right and he'll never know or care or understand, because he's supposed to be everything I'm not.

I'd do anything to give him a taste of this wild reeling pain, the constant tears, the constant lump in the back of my throat. I'd do anything to be able to just give him everything I am. Just for a day, an hour, a minute, anything. Just a taste of me.

He was never mine, but I want him here with me all the same. I miss him, not ever having known him. I want him back, never having had him. I long for his friendship, much though I've never experienced it. I wish away the pain, knowing it won't go away just like that. He's not mine to wish for, but can't I have a little dream of my own? He's everything I'm not, and some of the things he is I so want to be.

I want him with burning primeval fire. I want to know how he tastes, what his skin and hair feels like, what colours his eyes can be. I want to know if his blood runs hot or cold. I want to know everything behind those blank swirling eyes with all those camouflaging emotions.

And one day I _will_ know. But until then, I'll be a slave, I'll be silent, I'll fade and wish and hope and dream and wait.

I will.

I _will_.

I will do _anything_ for him, you see. And when it all goes upside down, he'll do anything for me.

You see?

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Fluffy: Go. Go forth and fear. 


	2. In Which There Is Bad Planning

Fate: Ra! Take two.

Disclaimer: Not ours, toss off, you know the drill.

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**[1] In Which There Is Bad Planning**

"Ryou! Oi! _Ryou!"_

Ryou Bakura performed the move best known as the deer-in-the-headlights-leap-of-terror and stared at the caller. "'Lo, Jounouchiiishitfuckow," he gasped as he landed on his bad ankle. "Sorry, sorry," he apologized, hopping on one foot and looking around wildly for some kind of support.

Jou looked exasperated. "Ryou, Ryou, Ryou...you can _not_ just come wandering — excuse me, _staggering_ — down this street with blood all over your face and a bad ankle and pretend all is well by pawning me off with a 'Lo, Jounouchi'. Nice try." He slung one arm around the silver-haired boy and none too roughly pushed the hair aside from where the blood was welling on his head. "Jesus fuck. I'd ask you to excuse my language, but you used worse, so we'll move on to the more pressing matter of what the _hell_ happened?"

"I tripped over the table leg, twisted my ankle, and hit my head on the table. Then I ran before my yami could find out," Ryou said softly.

"Uh huh. I don't suppose he pushed you."

"No, he didn't." Ryou sighed, then shot Jounouchi a rather patient look, given the circumstances. "I'm really all right. We're just out of Band-Aids."

"Band-Aids on this thing?" Jounouchi asked, still pulling hair from the cut as Ryou winced. "This is stitches material, you tit."

"A really big Band-Aid."

"Fine," Jounouchi acquiesced, throwing his free hand into the air. "Band-Aids it is. But you're going to let me take care of it."

"Er...Jounouchi, not to sound impolite, but..."

"How do I know how to do all things medical?" Jounouchi finished. "Let's see. Maybe it has something to do with having been a part of a gang until recent times? Oh, and then the whole thing with people being killed, and souls getting sucked out, and all that."

"I'm sorry," Ryou apologized earnestly. "Really."

"Don't be sorry, just sit down before you fall over onto the pavement and die. Again. Again again. You know, threat of death really doesn't work on you," Jounouchi mused, pushing the other boy down onto a park bench. "Hey, listen. Your private life is your private life, but may I recommend ducking once in a while?"

"I can't duck a table, Jounouchi," Ryou replied gently. "Especially when I'm the one falling onto it. Ow," he added when Jounouchi tugged at the bloodstained hair fitfully once more.

"Yeah, well, if someone throws one at you, _then_ you duck." With these parting words, Jounouchi sailed away.

Five minutes and fourteen seconds later, Jounouchi reappeared, woke Ryou up, and dumped a bundle of wrapped and sterilized items on the park bench. "You sit here and eat this," he ordered. "I shouldn't have let you sleep, but it can't be helped now. Eat it!" he added, poking the protein bar. "You need your iron, seeing as you lost a hell of a lot of it. Sheeeeee-_it,_" he added, dunking a piece of gauze in alcohol and going at the mostly clotted wound on Ryou's temple. "You're damn lucky to have survived this."

"Yeah, well," Ryou said modestly, not mentioning the several times when he'd returned from death or other such nasty fates. It was beginning to look like one of those times again. "Ow!"

"It's going to sting," Jounouchi warned five seconds too late. "But I have to get it cleaned out or it'll get infected, and that will not be pleasant. Hey, listen," he added. "Ever considered retaliation?"

"No, not really," Ryou lied. "He'd get mad." _And is it a bad thing that I find him unbearably irresistible when he's furious?_

Good thing Jounouchi wasn't a good mind-reader.

"I'm not saying hurt him. Hey, remember, I've seen this guy's psychotic side. I'm not putting you in the path of that."

"Thanks. I think?" _I think not, but thank you for trying, Jounouchi..._

"No, see, I'm thinking more along the lines of a shock rather than a physical attack," Jounouchi said earnestly.

"A shock," Ryou repeated disbelievingly.

"Yes. Run screaming through the house painted colors of your favorite baseball team. Invite home three random people and snog them all at once. Watch a gory movie marathon. Pretend you're the Sugarplum Fairy and take up ballet. Talk him into a wild shagfest on the roof," Jou suggested.

Ryou wibbled. "Say _what?"_

"Hey, hey, I'm blonde, not blind," Jounouchi said crossly.

"Sorry. But how the _hell_ did you – ?"

"Made an educated guess. Watched to see what happened," Jounouchi explained. "And...there," he added, finishing up with more strips of gauze. "Let me see that ankle."

[-]

"I don't suppose you'd like to tell me where you went?"

Ryou glanced at his yami with my peripheral vision, arranged over the couch as he was. Sprawling on his back, with his feet up on the armrest, almost smiling but missing by a few notches and thus landing somewhere in the realm of a smirk. Contempt, irritation, and drawn-out, malicious loathing all took turns mooching through red eyes.

_There is nothing more disturbing than being turned on and terrified at the same time,_ Ryou decided. _In the entire universe. This wins. Hands down. Beats the game piece, beats the card, beats the coma, beats the letters to Amane, beats having a completely deranged man living in my mind, beats being in _lust _with said man, beats – oh bloody hell, did he say something?_

"Meep?" Ryou volunteered.

"Are you planning to answer me any time this _millennium?_ Just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm patient," Bakura spat. "Where the fuck were you, why do you reek of blood, and what the fuck have you been doing?"

Ryou thought for a moment. He could tell the truth and send his yami off into transports of fury, after which he would start stomping around the house, looking sulky, and jumping at every small noise that might be the Evil Bitchy Pompous Idiot-Thing From Hell (more commonly known as Yami no Yuugi) coming in to perform some speech in which he might wax wroth with righteous rancor. Or he could stand there, look rather clueless, and wind up with a – er. Rather pointy switchblade in his face. You know, like what was going on right now.

"I may be a deranged amoral pest and you may hate me with all your soft mortal heart, but I think I'm owed an answer," Bakura snarled. "You got hurt. _Answer me!"_

Ryou made a snap decision that, if he had paused to think about it, he would have blamed on the head injury.

Poor, misguided little boy.

Leaving mind and logic back on the floor in a confused heap, Ryou swung around, slammed his unsuspecting yami into the wall, and kissed him. Hard.

Ryou vaguely heard the knife drop to the floor. Barely realized that Bakura had started shaking violently enough that, if he hadn't been supported by the wall, he would have collapsed. But beyond that, everything was a total blank.

_...wanted to know how he tasted how his skin felt and hair and take it all take everything from me take everything of mine just for a second and – _

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Fluffy: See? Now it makes more sense. beams

**Sarina Fannel: **Thanks for being the first reviewer!

**Kaori or Yami Kura:** Thankoos for reviewing!

**Meaghan:** We're having trouble getting our angst on.

**--:** Calm? Who's calm? I had Mountain Dew today!

**Melissa: **Erm...oops, slipped my mind? Yay, you dropped by!


	3. In Which Things Turn Upside Down

Fate: Ta-da! This is a major chapter crunch, and probably the cause of THSB suddenly seeming shorter. Don't worry about it. I was just in the habit of writing much shorter chapters two years ago. ;; But be happy. It's been polished, even! Less melodrama, more angst, more plot!

Disclaimer: FLY AND BE FREE! Oh. Er. Nickelback isn't living in our room, so I guess they're not ours.

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**[2] In Which Things Turn Upside Down**

Yami no Bakura was, to say the least, royally confused. And scared. And numb. And very astonished that his idiotic, weak, could-be-broken-in-half-with-a-glare hikari was very deftly managing to keep up a most enjoyable game of tonsil hockey.

It just wasn't the sort of thing one expected from said idiotic, weak, and-so-on-and-so-forth hikari. The astonishment resulting from this discovery threatened to overwhelm the numbness. Bakura threatened to hurt the astonishment if it took away what felt like his only salvation but left the confusion and fear alone. The astonishment, being unable to be hurt, didn't listen. It and numbness promptly abandoned him, leaving him alone with terror, confusion, and a growing sense of dizziness. And maybe some pesky other emotions too.

Ryou still hadn't stopped kissing him, either. Bakura tried to be angry about this. It didn't quite work. This was possibly due to the fact that all he could focus on was, _I know I never taught him to do this._ And maybe the fact that it was _Ryou_, and his hands were doing things he couldn't follow but felt anyway like strange ice, and maybe the odd little draining sensation that all of a sudden _yanked – _

Something was not quite right anymore. Something had been wrong, and had been getting wronger by the minute, and it had suddenly broken. And after a few irritable weeks of literal soul-searching, Bakura was suddenly able to put a name to the 'something'.

_Ryou...what are you _doing _to me...Ryou...?_

The gentle dizziness suddenly swamped him, filling his ears with white noise and blacking out the edges of his vision. And somewhere in the middle of it, Ryou stopped kissing him.

Everything rushed back to normalcy. Bakura blinked, still trembling in body-wracking spasms. "Wh-wh-what was that?"

Ryou smiled lazily. "I wanted you to see what it was like, being so crazily in love with something so evil." He shook his head and laughed softly. "I didn't think about what I'd have to trade for it. And now I'm not so sure I want to trade back."

Bakura simply gaped at his hikari, who had planted his hands on either side of him. The only thing keeping the stunned yami standing was the wall and his hikari pinning him to it.

Ryou still was wearing that lazy, the-world-be-damned smirk. It was now accompanied by only halfway open dark eyes and lines of mockery that Bakura had never seen before on anyone but himself. "You know, once, I would have given anything for this." Ryou shook his head slightly, silvery hair cascading around his face and brushing Bakura's nose. "Only five minutes ago, now that I think about it."

Bakura blinked, stared, tried to stop shaking, and managed to lean fractionally farther away from Ryou. "And all along people have been calling me insane," he managed to grind out.

"But you _are_ the insane one," Ryou said with a smile. "You're mad, and I'm mad. We're all mad here, yami mine. Are you in love yet? Does it hurt at all?" Ryou laughed again. "Emotions...such pathetic things. I can make you wild with a touch, and you taste like..."

"Don't touch me," Bakura hissed.

"Too late," Ryou replied. "Oh, yami, yami, my weakling yami." Ryou gently pushed the hair out of Bakura's face. "The roles have reversed, you see. We are one. And when I gain a quality you have, you must lose your grip on that quality yourself if you are so determined to separate us."

It was definitely time for Bakura to find a quiet, dark corner and do some serious thinking about his relationship with Ryou.

"Do you want to be left alone now?" Ryou asked with amazing perspicacity. "Alone, just like I've been ever since you broke into my soul and took up residence there? Even though I have you forever, I'm alone. Forever alone. And now you're going to be alone too." He abruptly stepped back and vanished around the corner of the room.

Bakura slid to the floor with a shuddering sigh and buried his face in his hands. _He can't be alone. He's mine, he's mine, he's _mine_!_

"You're mine!" Yami Bakura screamed at the unresponsive living room. "Damn you, Ryou, you're _mine_! You'll never be alone! I'll be in your thoughts, in your head, in you and all over you for _eternity! _You're _mine!_"

If Ryou heard, he gave no sign of it. Then again, it wasn't like Bakura was in any condition to notice signs. If Ryou had run screaming through the house in the nude playing an accordion and bellowing the lyrics to "What If God Smoked Cannabis?", Bakura would have been completely oblivious.

_Ra take my bloody hikari. What was he playing at? I should go find him and –_

"Thinking deep thoughts?"

Bakura froze. _Oh, Ra..._

"You know, I was in the habit of doing that, once." Ryou had one arm around Bakura's huddled shoulders and was tracing his fingers through his yami's pale hair, making it even more wildly spiky. The would-be gentle gesture was annulled by the dreamy, dangerous tone in Ryou's voice and...

Bakura tilted his head back even more to meet his hikari's eyes in shock. Ryou was smiling gently, with the horrible lines of teasing and torture shining in his once-innocent face. "And all I ever thought about was you. Did you know that? Always and forever you. But you never knew, you never cared. Nothing like that. But now you know." Ryou kissed his temple lightly. "Now you know."

The skin-on-skin contact vanished as Ryou once more deserted Bakura to the inner machinations of his own mind. Bakura stayed huddled thus for a while, then, remembering how Ryou had sneaked up on him, looked around wildly for any rampaging hikaris.

Ryou was long gone. But there was something from upstairs.

Music.

It was unfamiliar. Faint. Something he'd never heard Ryou listen to. But it had to be Ryou. Besides, Ryou was apparently trying quite a few new things that, if he wasn't doing a lot of these new things to him, he would declare pretty damn near praiseworthy. Especially that amazing new ability to kiss the life out of people.

But he still wanted to hear the music more clearly. Something about it made him want to hunt it down and listen to it. And then maybe throw the magic music box producing it against a wall so his hikari wouldn't be any more corrupted. And then jump on it, stab it, throw it out the window, and torture it into giving him his Ryou back.

With this firmly in mind, he felt around for the knife he'd dropped. Ryou never touched his knives, he knew what would happen if he –

But Ryou was different now. And, hey presto, no knife.

Bakura stomped towards the kitchen, kicking aside everything in his way. He was beginning to regain his bad temper and strength. This could spell trouble for Ryou, psychotic or not.

_Kitchen. Knives. Fire. Good_, he thought as he slammed the door open.

No knives there, either.

Bakura then did something he had never done before.

He addressed Ryou like a malicious sibling rather than a doormat.

"_Ryou!_ Give me back my _fucking_ knife or I'm going to go hunt you down, tear you apart with my _teeth_, and rip them from your sodding _body!_"

Er. We should all remember that Bakura was deprived of all familial influences at a tender age.

"Yami." It was a taunting, sing-song voice; soft, breathy, cultured, but still mocking. He looked up to see Ryou sitting on the stairs with a wild, delighted grin on his face and malice glimmering in his eyes. He was holding Bakura's switchblade lazily in one hand and was gently drawing the fingers of his other hand across the edge. "Come and get it." Ryou pressed one bloody finger to his lips and smiled. "If you can," he whispered, his lips being stained red with his own blood.

Bakura focused on regaining his footing and taking deep breaths. When he looked back at the stairs, Ryou was gone. There was no trace that the slighter boy had ever been sitting there.

B_reathe. Do not scream at Ryou. Breathe. Do not scream at Ryou. Breathe. Bugger this for a lark. Find a weapon and threaten him. And remember to breathe_, he thought to himself.

After much rummaging in the kitchen, he found a pair of pink plastic blunt-tipped scissors, a roll of wallpaper, a forgotten comb with a few strands of silver-white hair, a cheap broken plastic pen, and an ancient piece of duct tape. The latter probably dated back to when he'd first been robbing tombs.

After realizing that his only option for arms was to try and scare Ryou with the terrifying cuteness of the pink scissors or smack him on the head with the wallpaper, he decided to just go and threaten him.

And so Bakura snatched up the pink plastic scissors, and stomped up the stairs. Teddy Roosevelt didn't have a thing on him when it came to stairs.

He paused at the landing. The music had started again. Bakura cautiously poked open Ryou's door with the pink scissors and stuck his head around it.

Ryou's laptop was abandoned, as though he'd just stepped out for a minute. _Probably plotting my demise right this minute. Little fucker._ There was music playing very faintly on headphones

"_...don't think we left my hotel room_

_Should show you the sights 'cause I think I said that I would_

_We gotta make love just one more time in the shower_

_'Cause something's gotta go wrong, 'cause I'm feeling just too damn good..."_

"What, he thinks _he_ has problems?" Bakura asked indignantly, pulling off the headphones.

"I don't know, your problem isn't much different from his. Only something _already_ went wrong," Ryou said, closing the door behind him.

"Holy shit!" Bakura whirled around to face his hikari.

"I assume you're here for something. Could it possibly be me?" Ryou asked, mock-piteously.

"Sod off. You took every single _bloody_ knife in the bloody house. Now you can _bloody_ well give them back," Bakura growled.

"Or, I could _not,_" Ryou said with a smile. He held out one hand. "Come here."

Bakura went.

"You're still beautiful," Ryou said softly. "I didn't lose that." He reached over and twined his arms over Bakura's shoulders. "I'm not completely insensitive. Not yet."

"Shut up and kiss me already if you're going to," Bakura replied, flinching.

"If you insist," Ryou replied.

_Oh gods oh gods oh gods oh gods oh gods help me..._

"_...'cause something's gotta go wrong 'cause I'm feeling way too damn good and it's like every time I turn around I fall in love and find..."_

Bakura shoved Ryou away, hard. "Not you! Not like this! Not _you!" _He nearly flew for the window and crashed through it, not bothering to open it. The glass carved deep into his flesh as he slammed through, then dropped heavily to the ground. Almost instantly he dragged himself to his feet, gasping, broken, wracked with pain, but driven by enough terror to keep it all away.

The falling dusk was almost enough to obliterate a dark-clad, slightly built boy with a shock of silver-white hair, streaked with blood and stumbling down the street, a small piece of pink plastic clutched mindlessly in his left fist.

Almost.

But not quite.

Ryou turned away from the broken window with a smile, licking some of the blood off of a stray shard of glass. He then calmly righted the chair, sat down at his computer, donned his headphones, and smiled at the knife lying to the left of the laptop.

_Now. What was I doing, again?_

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Fluffy: We've had to condense the review replies in accordance with the gestapo. Read on for new review replies! Oh, and all the replies from the three chapters that became one are in here. Promise!

**lynx wings:** Good thing you find it fun. Bakura doesn't.

**Beholder of the Shadows:** And he wasn't expecting it, either. Hee.

**Girl Bakura: **You're correct about the snogging.

**Julie:** Thanks for reviewing!

**Seadragon1012:** Sorrysorry. We had computer troubles. Bad Mel. Bad, bad Mel.

**Schizothief:** waveses Does it bring back memories yet? Bwahaha.

**Alyssa-anime-angel:** It's coming, it's coming. Bakura...cute...never thought of that one.

**Yami Anime Writer:** In retrospect, you saved us. Much thanks!

**Neko and Inu-chan:** Doesn't anyone like Bakura?

**Brit-chan:** Have pocky. Mmm. Pocky goodness. And Ryou's phone number, too.

**mizustarangel: **Yep, no one loves Bakura. Sigh. Let us revolutionize the world.

**MER-PEOPLe: **Not a bad idea, but I think I need a website first. And to pass chem with an A.

**Lfangor:** Sankyuu sankyuu for reviewing!

**Fyredra: **Er. Hounds of Anubis. Er. We'll be. Uh. Going now. Psst, ten bucks on natural.

**moonnymph:** ;;

**little maiden:** Look! Someone likes him!

Duel: So, uh, look at that. Reviews. Go forth and contribute, et cetera.


	4. In Which Jounouchi Plays Doctor

Fate: I liked writing this chapter. I remember it well.

Disclaimer: FEED, MY CHILDREN! FEEEEEED!

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**[3] In Which Jounouchi Plays Doctor**

Jounouchi was sauntering back home from an eventful night out when he tripped over an unconscious form lying in the road.

"Bloody drunks!" he yelped, picking himself up from where he'd sprawled on the sidewalk and rubbing his face irately with scraped-up hands. He turned back to give the unconscious form a piece of his mind, though he could hardly spare it, and froze with his mouth open wide enough to catch an entire hive of Africanized honeybees.

He closed his mouth with some effort, though not without a few undignified squeaky noises, at the sight of the blood pooled under the person curled on the ground.

_Maybe they got hit by a car! _Jounouchi thought wildly. _Should I move them? If only there were a proper streetlight around here, and then I could see what had happened! _He glanced around. _No cars. No sign of a crash. But I'd hardly have expected anyone to stick around after doing this._

Blood was patterned down the sidewalk as though someone had staggered along it with bloody feet. _And they probably did, _Jou reminded himself with a shudder. _Maybe they got hit a while back and came here. _Steeling himself against nausea, horror, and more squeaky noises, he forced himself to move closer and kneel next to the person in a fetal position on the sidewalk. He could make out longish hair and a teenaged, though muscled, physique. And that was about it.

"Dammit!" Jou cursed, standing again with a rock in his hand. "Turn on, why don't you?" he screamed at the dead streetlight, hurling the rock at it. It nicked the edge of the lamp, which promptly flickered on.

"I'm good," Jounouchi said smugly, then looked down at the crumpled figure. There was no mistaking the untidy silver-white hair or the delicately boned face pressed to the pavement. "Ryou!" Jounouchi immediately dropped to his knees again and rolled the boy over without thinking. "Oh my God, Ryou!"

The unconscious boy was covered in scratches and bruises, and his black shirt was torn on the side, allowing Jounouchi a good view of a nasty bruise surrounding badly torn skin. _It looks like he really did get a glancing blow off a car. But..._wait _a second. _Jounouchi's eyes narrowed. _Black shirt? Black jeans? Bare feet? Silver cuffs on his wrists? _Pink scissors _in his left fist? What the...ohhh, _shit_._ A very unsavory thought popped into Jounouchi's head. He took a deep breath, then brushed at the left temple of the unconscious boy. There was a slight scratch, nothing more. Nothing like the nasty wound he'd dressed not five hours ago. And the boy's ankle was also normal, without showing any signs of swelling or bandaging. _Shit, shit, shit, shit!_ Jounouchi raved internally. _My God! It _is _him!_ Jou sat back on his heels nervously, trying not to shake. _His _yami_...what's _happened _to him? Where's Ryou?_

As though in answer to his fervent prayers, the boy on the pavement stirred and groaned, shielding his dark eyes from the blindingly bright streetlight, dropping the scissors as he did so. "So bright..." he murmured hoarsely. "The light...not the light..." He slumped back to the sidewalk again with a sigh, his eyes sliding closed again. "Not...light..."

Jou thought about that for a second. It could have been a plea to shut off the streetlight. Or it could have meant that something very bad had happened to Ryou. Jounouchi never shied at taking risks, but he wasn't about to let this one by.

Jou squared his shoulders and picked up the scissors, tucking them away in a pocket. Ryou's yami may have given everyone hell, but he was suffering now, and he was damned if he wasn't at least going to try and get some information out of him about Ryou's whereabouts and physical condition. And he might as well tape the boy up, too.

Sighing, Jounouchi carefully scooped the bloodied yami into his arms and stood up experimentally. He wasn't savagely attacked by any number of Duel Monsters or stabbed in the ribs. With this encouraging result, he began making tracks for his empty house, trying not to hurt Ryou's yami too much on the way.

He opened the door with his foot and kicked it shut, hopping in place as he wrenched off his shoes and tried not to drop the unconscious boy. Then he promptly laid Ryou's yami on the couch and bolted for the bathroom. _Let's see, I'll need antiseptic, about twenty million Band-Aids, a couple gauze pads, lots of medical tape...I wonder if I've still got a cold pack in the freezer? Oh, and definitely water and a washcloth. That blood's grossing me out. Eeeew._

When he returned laden down with pharmaceutical supplies, his new patient was again blinking in the bright lights and stirring fitfully. Jounouchi carefully turned the lamp so that it wasn't shining right into the boy's eyes and began cleaning off the cuts on his face.

"What are you _doing_ to me?" Ryou's yami asked, still sounding like he'd lost his voice by running.

"Taking care of you," Jounouchi replied coolly. "I patched up Ryou earlier, though knowing him, he would've denied talking to me to keep me safe from you. But when I see anyone lying half-dead in the road, I'm going to see what I can do for them. I think you got clipped by a car, so I was worried about you."

"You were _worried_ about me?" Ryou's yami demanded.

"I'm actually worried about Ryou having a heart attack over you coming back like that and him not knowing how to take care of you," Jounouchi corrected himself.

Ryou's yami sighed and closed his eyes, relaxing back onto the couch with a tormented look on his face. "He wouldn't. Not anymore."

Jounouchi raised his eyebrows and moved on to the boy's left arm. It bore the same kind of carved marks as the rest of him. "What made these?" he asked to get his mind off of Ryou's yami's unsettling comments about Ryou.

"I jumped through a second-story window," Ryou's yami said blandly.

Jounouchi was stunned for several reasons. The first reason was that Ryou's yami was being so open and un-hostile. Mostly his previous encounters with said yami had been full of "BWAHAHAHA! TASTE MY WRATH, MORTAL WEAKLINGS!". The second reason was that Ryou's yami had jumped through a second-story window. "A closed one?"

"What, do they come in other variants?" Ryou's yami asked impatiently.

"It could have been an open window."

There was a long pause in which Ryou's yami glared at Jounouchi with enough anger to melt steel. Jou rebutted with an ultranaïve 'you said something?' look. Both seemed to have some practice behind their respective looks. Finally Jou looked away before Ryou's yami could morph from garden-variety yami to "I WILL SUCK YOUR SOUL OUT THROUGH A TOOTHPICK!" yami and said, "Okay, so you jumped through a closed window and got hit by a car. Was there a reason, or were you just feeling suicidal?"

"Suicidal?" Ryou's yami repeated incredulously.

"Yeah. You know. 'Tra la la, oh look, life sucks, I don't have all the Millennium Items, the world can go to hell, I'm going to make a contract with a crazy blonde in blood on my arm, oh look, pretty birdie!'" Jounouchi explained.

This time the murderous look seemed, if possible, to have gotten even worse.

"Okay," Jounouchi said. "Remember, you're unarmed, and I'm only trying to help you. And on that note, this is going to hurt a bit." Jounouchi moved around and began cleaning up the nasty scrapes on Ryou's yami's feet, even having to pick pebbles out from under his skin at times. The boy barely flinched as he did this, apparently so used to the pain that he didn't notice. "Why don't you tell me why I found you in a bloody heap two streets away from my house after being hit by a car?"

"My hikari has gone off the deep end," Ryou's yami said dully. "He kissed me. He took all my damn magic. He said he wanted me to suffer like he'd suffered. And now I'm suffering, and he's...crazy. Cutting his skin open. Tormenting me just to watch me panic. I know you hate me, but I swear on whatever you put in front of me to swear on that I've never done such a thing myself. I only _ever_ did what he wanted, deep down. I only _ever_ did what he told me. I've protected him, I've died for him, and you're not going to trust me, are you?" Ryou's yami was now bordering on hysterical, with some homicidal mania lurking in the eaves.

"Jesus! Calm down, I trust you on this! Ack! Stop that flailing! _Down, boy!"_ Jounouchi grabbed Ryou's yami's arms hard and hauled the other boy upright. "Sit here. Don't panic. Don't fuck with me. Don't _move,_" he added as Ryou's yami began squirming defiantly. "I. Trust. You. On. This," he enunciated slowly. "I know my accent is different than Ryou's, but I know you can understand me. [1] Now _please_ calm down before I knock you out."

Ryou's yami stared at him for a long time. _He does that a lot,_ Jounouchi mused. _I wonder if it's because he's only used to interacting with someone who he can read as well as he knows himself?_

"All right," Ryou's yami said quietly. "You'll help me."

"Yes, I will," Jounouchi agreed. "Now were you hit by a car?"

"One of those insane metal things on the road chased me," Ryou's yami said with dignity.

"So that's a yes," Jounouchi replied as he began poking at the wound with antiseptic. "It doesn't look that bad. I think most of the blood came from your scalp and your feet. You're lucky."

"Hn." Ryou's yami looked up at him with a strange smile that was just a few hairs off being normal. "I'm lucky in having the other half of my soul having taken on all my nastier aspects and using them against me?"

"I didn't mean like that," Jounouchi replied, starting work on the boy's worst injury. "So now what is he like? Is he exactly like you were?"

"I haven't changed," Ryou's yami protested. "I'm still – "

"Let me explain something to you," Jounouchi began. "We all see you as this tormentor, this deranged crazy man who's holding a five thousand year grudge, this nutball who's taking out his frustrations on our friend. Ryou. We think you're deranged, we think you're evil. Enlighten me."

"You..." Ryou's yami was staring at him in pure, unforseen shock. "You're going to listen to me."

Jounouchi felt some kind of odd shock in return. "Yes."

"Yami murdered my family. My village. Everything I had, he destroyed it for the Items," Ryou's yami said simply. "If anyone has a right to have them, it's me. To get their souls back. And to get revenge. Who gives a fuck about the world? I don't want the world. I want what's mine. And that's not what Ryou is," he added with sudden energy. "He doesn't do anything for anyone. Everything's about pleasure, it seems. There's _nothing_ in him that does anything for anyone." Ryou's yami pulled his knees up to his chest defensively. "I didn't give him that."

Jounouchi firmly rearranged the silver-haired boy's body. "Slump over and kick yourself when I'm done," he ordered sternly. "I need a name for you. I can't just keep thinking of you as Ryou's yami."

"Now that I have a personality, you mean?" Ryou's yami asked mockingly.

"Something like that," Jou acquiesced easily.

Ryou's yami blinked. "Bakura. Call me Bakura."

"But that's Ryou's name," Jounouchi protested.

"So you accept that we can live in one body, share a mind, share a soul, share likenesses, but you don't get that we have the same name?" Bakura asked, sounding exasperated.

"Oh. Never mind. Well then, Bakura, what do you propose to do with Ryou? You can't live with him, if you were that desperate to get away," Jounouchi observed.

Bakura's fists clenched. "I want my Ryou back. He's _mine_. You people nowadays don't get the whole ownership thing. I want to know how to get my Ryou back." His voice dropped and he muttered something he probably didn't intend for Jounouchi to hear, though he did anyway, "Although if he keeps that marvelous kissing ability, I won't complain."

Jounouchi snickered and raised one eyebrow at the white-haired yami, whose face promptly matched his eyes, which had begun to flame red in anger. "I heard nothing."

"Damn straight you did," Bakura growled, causing Jounouchi to laugh even harder as he applied antiseptic to his patient's cuts.

"Oh, by the way," Jounouchi said innocently, feeling in his jacket pocket. "Are these yours?" he inquired, holding up the pink plastic scissors.

Bakura snatched the scissors and stuffed them in one of his own pockets. "You didn't see anything, either. Mortal."

Jounouchi held up his hands in defeat. "I am blind and deaf." He promptly cracked up at the incensed look on Bakura's face.

Much later, after Jounouchi had finished entertaining himself by ribbing the downtrodden Bakura, he was putting the last strips of tape on the sulky Egyptian.

"You're done, Bakura," Jounouchi announced, looking Bakura over with professional interest as the silver-haired boy rose to his feet, stretched, and cracked his knuckles sulkily. "Fight the urge to beat the crap out of me," Jounouchi advised with a chuckle as the phone rang. "Who could be calling at this late an hour?" he wondered to himself as he felt around on the coffee table for the phone. Picking it up, he said casually, "Yo."

"Why, hello there, Jounouchi..."

"Ryou!"

"Of course, Jounouchi. Is my yami all better now? You're _so_ good with that sort of thing," Ryou purred softly. His quiet voice was filled with restrained venom. "I tried to give you an extra challenge, but the driver of the car I let the Kuribohs loose in was fairly focused and mostly missed him. But that's okay. I don't do physical pain as a rule. That's for my yami. Is he there? I'd _love_ to speak to him, Jounouchi. I miss him so."

Jounouchi turned to Bakura, who was now sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest. He stretched one hand out for the phone wordlessly. "Give."

Jounouchi handed it over.

Bakura's face went very pale very quickly. "You're mad," he whispered after a long moment. "You're completely mad." Pause. "No." Pause. "_No."_ Long, long silence. Bakura's eyes suddenly flew wide. "_No, _I _don't!_ Not _you!_ _No!"_ He flung the phone at Jounouchi and scrambled from the room, slamming into the walls blindly.

Jounouchi very slowly picked up the phone and raised it to his ear.

"Jounouchi? Are you there now? Or is it still my wonderfully delicious yami?" Ryou asked with a giggle.

"It's me, Ryou," Jounouchi said. "What did you tell him?"

Another soft, breathy laugh. "Exactly what I felt when I kissed him. Every...last...detail. He doesn't feel he deserves me. And the fact that I included details of what I'd love to do to – or with – him when he returns to me just made him wild," Ryou added smugly.

Jounouchi hit the off button and made to throw the phone across the room. Then he retracted his arm thoughtfully, looked around, and hit a speed-dial number. _Please please please let him not come back into the room right now._

Click. "'Lo, Kame Game Shop, we're really, really closed right now, and – "

"Hello, Yami?" he whispered into the phone. "Yeah, I know what time it is. Listen, I have a serious problem pertaining to all this yami-hikari stuff. Is Yuugi there too?" Stop. "What do you mean, he's on the other line? With _Ryou_? Oh, _shit!_"

* * *

Fluffy: I don't think we'll condense any more chapters after this, so all is well. Oh, and for the [1], we don't mean the Americanized accents. Jounouchi has a very...underbelly-of-the-city accent in the J-version, whereas Ryou does not. Bakura, not being a native speaker of Japanese, would logically have some difficulty understanding him.

**moonnymph:** Hee.

**keira: **Horror and freaky. Nice.

**Alyssa-anime-angel:** You inspired the phone call at the end of the chapter. I wasn't sure where to go until then. Thanks a lot and I hope you like this chapter!

**Melissa:** Ahaha...ha...are you sure you want to make that suggestion?

**LightOfDarkness: **Mwahaha. Fear my cliffie power.

Duel: Look. See? Imitate.


	5. In Which Everyone Is Disturbed

Fate: La. A storm is in the offing. Literally.

Disclaimer: Boogaboogaboogabooga!

* * *

**[4] In Which Everyone Is Disturbed**

"Hello to you, too, and yes, he's talking to Ryou," Yami said, feeling slightly miffed. "They _are_ friends."

"Right now I ain't so sure about that," Jounouchi replied, sounding as though he were trying to keep his voice down. "I kind of have a serious situation on my hands here, and I think you'd better get Ryou off the line."

"Why?" Yami felt a deep sense of foreboding replace his mild irritation and amusement. "Is his yami giving him trouble?"

"No," Jounouchi said. "Nothing like that. Kind of the other way around, if you know what I mean."

"I don't, Jounouchi. What's going on here?"

"I told you, I got a serious problem with all that Millennium magicky stuff, and I wouldn't talk to Ryou at all if you can help it. It's...um...disturbing," Jounouchi said, fumbling for the proper words. "Scary? No, that's his freaky yami. Unnerving? Yeah. Unnerving."

Yami blinked, sighed, and looked around for his vertically challenged hikari as Jounouchi rambled on in the background. _He makes _me_ feel tall. Ra help me if he should ever grow._ "Yuugi?"

"One second, I'll be right back," Yuugi said – probably to Ryou – from another room with a different phone line. "Yami?" he called. In a few seconds he'd poked his head around the doorframe and was giving Yami a mild version of his Puppy Dog Eyes Look Number Three, a.k.a. the Inquisitive Look of Doom.

"I think Jounouchi needs to speak to you urgently," Yami said, more to Jounouchi than to his aibou, who by then was fully into the room and intensifying the Look Number Three.

"Oh, right, yeah I do," Jounouchi said, sounding startled. Yami sighed and handed the phone over.

"Hey, Jounouchi, what's up? Can you tell me quick, I left Ryou hanging," Yuugi said. Yami could hear Jounouchi speaking, but he couldn't tell what he said. "What? Jounouchi, why do you want me to do that?" Yuugi covered the phone with one small hand and looked over at Yami who by that time was once more lying on his back next to the phone table where Yuugi was now sitting, just as he had been when the phone had rung. "Yami? Is...is Jounouchi drunk or something?"

"It's a possibility," Yami acknowledged this new idea. "Why do you ask, Yuugi?"

"He wants me to hang up on Ryou," Yuugi said wonderingly. "He sounds a little overexcited. And scared. And he won't stop whispering."

"Yuugi, aibou, give me the phone please," Yami said, holding up one hand for the phone. "Don't go talk to Ryou. I have a bad feeling about this."

"Sure thing," Yuugi said, handing the phone over.

"Jounouchi, why are you whispering?" Yami asked.

"I don't want him to hear me," Jounouchi said, like this was the most obvious thing in the world. "He doesn't like you that much, you know."

"Who, Yuugi?" Yami asked, shocked.

"No, of course not!" Now it was Jounouchi's turn to sound amazed.

"Well, then, who?"

"Bakura. Ryou's yami. He's somewhere in my house," Jounouchi said casually.

"Jounouchi, I'll be right there!" Yami promised, sitting up.

"Hey, wait a second!" Jounouchi protested. "I mean, I want you to get your ass over here real soon, but storming in here trying to kill Bakura isn't going to help me any. No, the reason I'm whispering is that it's him who needs the help and it's Ryou who's the psycho, and if Bakura finds out I'm calling you, hit by a car or not hit by a car, I'm toast!"

"Ryou a psycho? Hit by a car? The thief needing my help? Jounouchi, are you drunk?" Yami demanded.

"No, but I've got enough medicine to stock a small dispensary scattered all over the front room, blood all over the place, a tomb robber hiding somewhere in my house, and a suddenly very scary friend who seems to be making a habit of calling up people he knows and saying scary and perverted things," Jounouchi replied with dignity. "Can I talk to Yuugi again?"

"All right, Jounouchi, but I'm still coming over there," Yami said. He gave the phone to Yuugi, then hauled himself to his feet and prowled into the room he shared in part with Yuugi. It was, as usual, an adorable mess. This meant that Yami's small collection of material items was very often difficult to find, as Yuugi rearranged his room about once a week.

Yami sighed and began hunting through the room on his hands and knees. _Where's he hidden my things this time? Sometimes I'm tempted to dump half this stuff into the Shadow Realm. Neither of us _uses_ it._ Every so often these thoughts were punctuated with a curse or two as he hit various parts of his anatomy on unyielding objects.

Finally he pulled a plastic bin out from under the bed. "Ah. _There_ we go," he said, brushing dust off of his clothing and opening the bin. It was crammed full of things he'd found when Yuugi had dragged him around the mall soon after they had both discovered he could have his own physical form. _Oooh. Buckles. There._ Yami snatched out a dark red pleather coat, long pants, and three red belts, all laden with enough buckles to equip a small horde of schoolchildren's shoes. He then slammed the cover back onto the bin and kicked it across the room, where it promptly burst open and spilled leather and vinyl across the floor.

Yami decided to ignore this and shrugged into his new adornments, discarding the ratty sweatsuit he secretly wore when only he and Yuugi were home. With this done, he marched regally out of the room and closed the door on the now-increased mess. _I didn't do it._

As he passed the room with the phone off of the hook, his curiosity promptly invited all of its friends over for a party, which they kicked off with pyrotechnics, margaritas, and bongo drums.

Yami decided to talk to Ryou.

He went over a bit noisily, considering the amount of metal and squeaky pleather on his body, and lifted the phone from the table. "Hello, Ryou, are you still there?"

There was a soft, breathy giggle from the other end. "Well hel-_lo_, pharaoh Yami. Not the 'yami' I was hoping for, but you'll do. You're probably wearing more leather than mine is now, and leather is pretty damn sexy. And yes, that _was_ what you thought I just said," Ryou added with another giggle. "So how've you been, o pharaoh? Planning to go play rescuer to my yami? Or maybe it's Jounouchi you'd like to rescue. Either way, that's _such_ a turn-on. Wish I could be there myself, but I have things to do." Ryou sighed tragically. "Maybe I'll stop by after my homework's done. How late are you free? You know, my yami thinks I'm an excellent kisser. You being the pharaoh, I'm sure you had the best of the best back in Egypt, so maybe _you_ can evaluate me?"

Yami pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it, horrified, as Ryou continued talking in that low, breathy, almost slutty voice. He slammed the phone down onto its hook and bolted back into the room with Yuugi. _There goes my vague idea of the thief brainwashing his hikari, he'd never go to _that_ extent. Or if he did, he wouldn't have left. Something is horribly wrong over there with Ryou. And Yuugi's staying _out_ of this. I don't want it happening to him! Well..._

"Hey, Yami," Yuugi said, holding out the phone. "Jounouchi wants to talk to you again."

"Jounouchi," Yami said softly as he took the phone and moved away from Yuugi. "I just talked to Ryou."

"Scary, huh?"

"He was flirting with me. Definitely asking me to kiss him, implying that I should. Er," Yami said, glancing at his still-present hikari.

"Do _not_ tell Bakura," Jounouchi replied instantly. "Oooh, you didn't hear me say that. But don't tell him."

"Hn." _Something I missed there? _Yami glanced at his aibou once more, then inexplicably began to flush. _I will _not_ start comparing our relationships, I will _not_ start comparing our relationships..._

"Yeah. But that's Ryou now."

"Look, I'm coming over there, and I'm _not_ bringing Yuugi. I don't want anything to happen to him," Yami said.

"I think you have to kiss him for this to happen," Jounouchi said.

"That's awkward." Yami decided not to expand on whether he was cursing the setup in general, the strange trigger, or the fact that this might prevent certain things he'd had in mind for a while.

"Oooh, am I detecting a bit of regret here?" Jounouchi asked, sounding delighted.

"I'll be right there," Yami said through clenched teeth, and hung up on Jounouchi.

"Yami?" Yuugi promptly asked.

"Yuugi, I need to go over there by myself. Something is affecting Ryou, and I don't want it to happen to you," Yami said. _Flirting, that's good. Ryou-class scariness, maybe not so good. Hathor in a hamburger, I need help._ "I'll keep in touch, aibou," he said, gently ruffling Yuugi's hair. "I'll try and be back before too late."

"Sure thing," Yuugi said. "Don't stay up too late, aibou."

Yami smirked – he never just _smiled_ – at his hikari and left for Jounouchi's house.

Then stopped outside in the street. _No _wonder_ the thief got floored. I almost want to pity him. Well, so long as he doesn't try and kill me or Ryou, we might be able to work something out. Maybe._

He walked silently through the streets of Domino City, thoughts stewing madly. Suddenly a familiar smell froze him where he stood.

_Blood. That's not a good thing._

He stared at the half-dried pool of it across the street from him, which had bloody footprints leading to it from the left. Yami stood gawking in a most un-regal manner for a good solid minute.

"Hey, Yami!" Jounouchi yelled, startling him out of his brown study. The blond boy was running down his street towards him. Yami blinked and cautiously crossed the street. When he reached the further side, Jounouchi was looking pensively at the blood on the sidewalk.

"I hope I have something with a lot of iron in it at home," he said inexplicably.

"Excuse me?" Yami asked, standing well clear of the blood.

"For Bakura," Jounouchi said. He nodded at the blood. "All his."

"What?" Yami's eyes widened. "What did this?"

"He said he jumped through a closed window, second story, then Ryou sent a Kuriboh at some driver and got him hit by a car," Jounouchi explained, drawing Yami away down the street. "C'mon, I better get back and find him. He really flipped when Ryou called him, and I think I'd better make sure he's not out killing someone or something like that. And I hope Ryou didn't decide to come visit. Bakura and I are on tenterhooks about this whole me-playing-medic thing, and I hope Ryou doesn't call him or anything. But I think he'd be smart enough to not pick up the phone," Jounouchi said thoughtfully.

Yuugi?Yami said silently.

/At your service./

If Ryou calls, hang up. Please. Promise?Yami asked.

/I guess, sure, I promise. But you're going to tell me why, right? What's happened to him?/

Of course I'll tell you. I just kind of have to find out first. I'll talk to you soon,Yami said.

/Okay./

Jounouchi pounded up the stairs to his house ahead of him. Yami began to follow, then froze. "Blessed Ra!"

"Blessed what?" Jounouchi asked, turning around.

"Ryou and the thief aren't in the habit of speaking through their link, but if Ryou should decide to for his own amusement, the thief might never get away from Ryou," Yami said.

"What, he can't block him?" Jounouchi called down softly, hurrying down to join Yami at the foot of the stairs.

"Maybe. I've never tried with Yuugi, and I don't choose to," Yami said firmly.

Jounouchi looked away. "If something like this happens, you might have to."

"I won't let it happen. It _will_ stop here," Yami swore. Regally, of course.

Jounouchi nodded, looking around for panoplies, fanfares, and scribes bearing the Royal Word of the Varicolored Pra – er, Pharaoh. "Then shut up and follow me. Carefully. This is going be a delicate operation."

"I'm good at delicate," Yami said defensively.

Jounouchi stared at him.

"Better than you are."

Again with the staring.

"I'm serious, Jounouchi."

"My ass you are," Jounouchi muttered, heading up the stairs. Yami followed, trying not to reflect on the conversation. He had the feeling he'd been severely put in his place.

Jounouchi threw the door open, hopped in place again as he discarded his shoes, then headed straight for the darkened kitchen. Yami followed silently.

"Bakura? Hey, Bakura, you still here?" Jounouchi asked, flicking on a light.

It was silent in the house.

Jounouchi half-smiled and looked at a closet set way at the back of the house. "Thought so," he said softly. He motioned for Yami to stay where he was, then went over and gently knocked on the firmly closed closet door. "C'mon out, Bakura. I need to start negotiations tonight."

The door opened fractionally.

* * *

**FluffCat:** Hentai phone calls are of the fun-ness. Ne, ne, do you think Ryou should start a phone-sex line?

**firedraygon97:** Updates! I love vacation. I can write all day. Except for summer term. But I write all day anyway.

**Sarina Fannel:** Sssh, it's a secret.

**moonnymph:** sits in a corner and cackles together with her hikari

**Keira:** And he's just going to get worse.

**LightofDarkness:** Ryou is yours for the night. With duct tape.

**Fyredra:** Everything you never wanted to know, all in ?

**Alyssa-Anime Angel:** All yamis shall fear the DERANGED RYOU OF DOOOOOOOM!

**Demented Yami: **Heeeeeeeey presto! I updated!!!

Duel: Yo. Got reviews?


	6. In Which A Treaty Is Made

Fate: The subtitle will make sense. I promise. Really.

Disclaimer: Helllooooo Kitty!

* * *

**[5]** **In Which A Treaty Is Made**

or **Yami no Bakura vs. 12 oz. of Ginger Ale**

Bakura poked the door after Jounouchi finished speaking, firmly stomping on any and all self-loathing. He then climbed to his feet and stormed out of the closet arrogantly, as though nothing had happened. He was promptly rewarded with a blinding headache and overwhelming dizziness.

"Bakura?" Jounouchi asked gently as he threw out one hand and fell back against the closet door, the mental and physical pain coming to a head once more. "Were you sick?"

Bakura blindly pushed past him to where he knew the bathroom had been and threw up again, retching for a long time and then collapsing to the cool tiles miserably.

_So weak...so tired...so weak...can't..._

He vaguely felt someone picking him up and carting him back to the couch in the front room, then rushing out and back of the room several times. He could hear two people arguing, Jounouchi and someone else. Jounouchi was winning. The blonde finally snapped, "Shut up and stay out." Then footsteps receded, a door slammed, and silence fell once more.

"Sit up," Jounouchi said after a while, sounding very close. "You lost too much blood and Ryou's mind torture did for you. You may not be mortal, but apparently that's Ryou's new specialty, done to a finish. And if you start doing the whole "I am a yami and immortal and godly and I can never appear weak" thing, then I'm going to punch you. I'm going to make you better, if you'll let me. Now sit up."

Bakura pushed himself upright and rubbed at his eyes with a growl. "You tell _anyone_ that this happened – "

"As a matter of fact, I locked the only other person in this house outside for the time being," Jounouchi said coolly. "Now take these," he said, holding out two small pills and a glass of water. "They'll help with whatever pain you have, and I'm positive you have some. And I know you can endure pain, but if you keep throwing up every five minutes, we'll never get anything done. So take the damn pills and sit still and get better," Jounouchi said, sounding very hacked off.

Bakura, who'd had a fair deal of other healers back in Egypt, knew better than to argue. The healers then had tended to crankily hand out varying strengths of medicine for a range of fees and didn't put up with anything. Especially thieves who wouldn't stay still and tried to make off with their poisons. Thus, Bakura had developed a healthy respect for healers. Demurely taking the proffered medicine, he knocked it back with more ease than he felt about digesting an unknown substance. Then again, he'd probably eaten worse.

"Good," Jounouchi said. "If you can keep that down, we can work from there. You need stuff with iron in it. You eat raw meat, don't you?" he called as he went back into the kitchen.

"You have a problem with that?"

"It's good, actually," Jounouchi replied acidly. "You'll recover faster if you do. You can go hunt some down tomorrow."

"Hn." Bakura grudgingly admitted to himself that Jounouchi actually wasn't as much of a blithering prat as he'd thought. He didn't seem like much of a wimp, didn't put up with anyone giving him hell, and had a reputation for beating people up. All in all, an agreeable sort, really. Maybe. "Who else is in this house?"

"Sitting on the doorstep, actually," Jounouchi said. "Brace yourself," he added, and flung the front door open. "I'll be in the kitchen if anyone needs me," he called, and bolted from the room.

And with a definite sense of self-preservation, Bakura thought as he stared at the very unwelcome visitor. "I should have known you'd be part of this. I should have _known_. You're trying to take my hikari away! You magicked him to be like this, and you're here to tell me if I don't change then I'll never be free! And you think I won't care and I'll fight you, but you're wrong. You're all _wrong_! I want him _back_! I want him back and I want him back right _now_! So take the damn spell off and I'll do anything. _Anything_! Take it off! _Now_!" He vaulted the couch and stormed over to a rather shell-shocked pharaoh, who was looking rather disoriented after being dragged down to a house, forced to tiptoe round it after Jounouchi, forcibly expelled, and then brought face-to-face with a very angry tomb robber on the warpath.

"I didn't do it," the prat of a pharaoh finally said.

_That's _it_? No insult? No sneer? No proof? Just...'I didn't do it'? Something's _wrong _here! _Bakura thought. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, where's the _rest_ of it? The high-and-mighty pharaoh-ness? The righteousness? The you-brought-it-on-yourself-so-bugger-you-for-a-lark-ness?" Bakura demanded fiercely.

"I don't want anything to happen to Yuugi, thief," the pharaoh spat. "And after your hikari flirted with me in a massive way – "

He was completely unprepared for being tackled by an outraged tomb robber. The two of them rolled down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, where Bakura pinned Yami to the pavement and snarled into his face, "And you accepted, didn't you, because you always took what you wanted and you wanted to make me suffer. Always have, always will. You've always been your father's bitch and you'll never remember it. You'll never remember what you did to me, but you hate me anyway and you want me to die! And when he offered, you took him. Didn't you? _Didn't you?"_

Yami stared at the young thief, amazed by the unconscious pain lining his face. "No."

"You're a _liar_!" The silver-haired boy's voice cracked on the last word.

"If that's what you want, then maybe I _will_ accept," Yami snapped.

"You – !" Bakura stared intensely at Yami. "You're telling the truth?"

"Yes."

"You never touched him? Ever? _Ever?"_

"On my word, he's all yours," Yami said.

"Good," Bakura said savagely, rising to his feet. He turned and stalked back into the house without a backward glance at the pharaoh.

"Hellfire," Jounouchi said as the thief passed the blond boy. "You've hurt yourself again. You feeling any better?"

Bakura did a quick assessment. "Pain's less."

"Feeling tolerant?"

"No."

"Did you really just tackle Yami and tell him to stay the hell away from your hikari?"

"Yes."

"Wow. Aren't you protective."

"If you value your life, you won't say another word on the topic," Bakura snarled.

Jounouchi smirked and turned away.

"The smirking is almost as bad!" Bakura howled.

"I'm not doing anything."

"That's the problem," Bakura muttered, taking a seat on the now rather bloody couch and checking out his new scrapes. _Bastet's litterbox, have I got any skin left unbruised or unbroken? _

Jounouchi silently picked up the basin of water made pinkish with blood and the cloth, then vanished from the room and reappeared with fresh water and a new rag. He set the basin down and handed the rag to Bakura. "Your turn this time. Antibiotic stuff and Band-Aids to your left. Anaesthetic on your right."

Bakura sighed and reached for the water as Jounouchi disappeared again. He ignored Jounouchi bringing the pharaoh into the room and sitting him on the couch on the other side of the room and began trying to differentiate between old gashes reopening and new scrapes appearing.

"Bakura," the pharaoh said. Bakura kept cleaning off his right arm. "I want to keep this from happening to anyone else. And I think having the old Ryou back would be nice. I'm not trying to attack you, or Ryou, or anyone."

"You'll leave us alone?" Bakura asked suspiciously.

"Yes, of course. If you stop beating up your hikari on a regular basis," Yami warned.

Bakura glared at him for an answer. "I do not beat him up. I never have. And I never will. How can you fathom that I would?"

"The bruises he gets – " Yami began.

"What? Doesn't your hikari pick up a few scrapes? He doesn't tell me what happens! He doesn't let me help him out! I'm fucking _stuck_ when he gets jumped!" Bakura was dead white. "You fucking, fucking _bastard_."

"Tear," Yami announced, drawing the aforementioned drop down his cheek. "The pity for you is overwhelming."

Bakura jerked back like he'd been slapped. After a few frozen seconds, he jerkily got to his feet and stormed out the door.

Jounouchi looked over at Yami. "If he runs off, never to be found, and Domino is plagued by a raging nymphomaniac as a result, I'm blaming you in full."

"I don't believe him," Yami said with a sigh. "I'd like to, but I've seen too much evidence against him."

Jounouchi glared at him, then shot to his feet, threw the door open, and stomped out of the house without changing his shoes. Five seconds later he returned, dragging Bakura by the scruff of his neck. "You are going to sit here and talk, and you are going to be civil, or _I_ will get violent." He shoved Bakura down next to the antiseptic on the bloody couch, then shot a murderous look at Yami. "And if I hear one more word from _you_ on this subject, you're getting booted out on your ass and I call in Pegasus for a consultation."

Bakura lifted a tear-streaked and pale face and glowered at Yami for emphasis.

"I never thought I'd see you cry," Yami said wonderingly.

Bakura raised one eyebrow. "Weak people hide things they think make them look weaker."

Yami thought about this. "So that's it, then." Yami looked covetously at the gold adornment on his chest. "And for Thoth's sake don't try to steal my Puzzle while we're doing this. This is going to be complicated enough."

"Fine," Bakura said sullenly. "Same for the Ring. You can't have it."

"May I step in?" Jounouchi said again, reappearing in the doorway with another basin and cloth. He handed it to the pharaoh, said, "Clean your cuts out properly," and then sat down on the floor between the two Egyptians, watching Yami critically. Bakura smirked to himself that he didn't warrant suspicion on proper health care and picked up the tube of antibiotic stuff.

He licked the blood off his fingers and unscrewed the cap with his teeth as Jounouchi said, "So now what?"

"I think we need a plan of action," Yami said.

Bakura spat the cap onto the floor, said, "No shit, Sherlock," and began poking the ointment at the worst of his cuts.

Yami and Jounouchi both stared at him.

Bakura looked up and blinked. "What?"

"Wait, hang on, you need a place to doss, first off," Jounouchi said, pointing at Bakura. "I wouldn't recommend Ryou's house or your soul room thing, whatever that is, because then you're wide open for assault. I also don't recommend Yuugi's house," he added mischievously.

Yami and Bakura both shot him pained looks that said eloquently, _Oh, Ra, not that! _Anything _but that!_

"Exactly," Jounouchi said, quite unruffled. "So, with that in mind, I think you have a choice of here or a bus station. I'd prefer here, because if it were a bus station, I'd have to hunt you down and bring all the medical stuff with me." At Bakura's blank look, he rolled his eyes eloquently and said, "You have to change those dressings. A lot."

"I heal fast," Bakura muttered.

"You still have to change the dressings," Jounouchi replied indefatigably. "And do _not_ argue."

Bakura, noting Jounouchi's switch into healer-mode, shut up.

"Good," Jounouchi said, once that subject had been closed. "My father's off somewhere doing the whole booze, whores, and flying fur thing, so you can stay wherever you want in here. So. What are we going to do? Yami, you have no idea what this is?"

Yami shrugged. "No."

"Fine then. Any ideas who would know?" Jounouchi demanded.

"Isis Ishtar and Shadi."

"Isis Ishtar and who?!" Jounouchi asked in confusion.

"The seer and Shadi?!" Bakura asked in horror. _Ra on a stick. How am I going to cover up some of the things I've done? They're not going to help me._

"Isis because she knows things," Yami explained, as though it were obvious. It was obvious. "Shadi because he _also_ knows things." Same tone, same reason.

"And neither of them have any lost love for me," Bakura said acidly.

"Yes, but it's not you who's at stake. It's Ryou," Yami said wisely.

_Bugger the smug pharaoh bastard. Why does he have to be right? _Bakura wondered as he began peeling the paper off of the Band-Aids and applying them liberally. "...Fine."

Jounouchi tore himself away from critically watching Yami doctor himself and marched into the kitchen. "Well, we're not going to get anything done tonight. It's late. No one will want to talk to us now. We can do this tomorrow."

"Yes," Yami said. "I've got to get back to Yuugi."

Bakura felt a stab of envy. If said 'stab' had been made with a six-foot broadsword, which ran him through and then twisted around a couple times, and finally ripped him apart. To disguise this fact, he also rose to his feet and followed Jounouchi.

"Hey," Jounouchi said, rummaging in the big white box that emanated coldness. "Catch this," he said, throwing a small can at Bakura. "'S ginger ale. It's good for you. Have some."

Bakura promptly opened the can and was doused in carbonated spray.

Yami promptly burst out laughing as Bakura blew some soaked strands of hair out of his face. Jounouchi merely retreated into his room and slammed the door with a parting, "Nobody kill _anybody_ in this house."

As Yami stumbled out of the door, still laughing, Bakura very composedly drank some of the soda and walked to a window overlooking the street. As Yami began sauntering away, Bakura pried the window open. He took another drink, then leaned out of the window, aimed, and threw the half-full can at the pharaoh.

_My hand-eye coordination is good_, he congratulated himself as he closed the window and turned away from the drenched and cursing pharaoh.

_So we have a weekend. And I have to work with the bloody pharaoh, a scary healer boy, an equally scary oracular girl, and that freaky Shadi._

_Oh hell._

_What am I going to do with the Millennium Eye?_ [2]

* * *

Fluffy: I don't remember exactly, but I think we hit a record high on reviews for this chapter. Oh, and the [2] means that this was written before the bit with Bakura vs. Seto with the Eye was aired/written. (Never saw it in the manga, only just now saw the TV version which places it _before_ the Egypt arc, so it has to be in there somewhere. Maybe?)

**Chibi: **Will do!

**Alyssa-Anime-Angel: **You've given him ideas.

**Chaosknight:** Ryou wants your phone number.

**Melissa:** I love flaunting characters' fetishes. Read on and see more!

**Keira:** whistles innocently

**Mad Psyentist/Korogi Nagisa:** But it's fun...?

**Pocky: **POCKY!! Fwuffy Sesshy-sama-licious Magenta Tail Glomp of Doooooooooooooom

**a very angry person:** Bwahaha. Ha. Ha?

**Falcona SkyWolf:** Hi!

**Carolyn: **I live in fear. Fear! ;;

**Ri-chan:** He's for hire. Promise.

**firedraygon97:** We're getting there. ;;

**SSCeles:** Wow! Really? THANKS!

**LightOfDarkness: ** Read it, loved it. Updates for you!

**Fyredra: **Heh, more godly sarcasm coming riiiiiiight up!

Duel: Yo. This would be the part where you go forth and imitate. Go!


	7. In Which Yuugi Meets The Sexy New Ryou

Fate: Meedeep. Fluffy has important things to say.

Disclaimer: But I don't. Oingo Boingo!

* * *

**[6] In Which Yuugi Meets The Sexy New Ryou**

Yuugi paced restlessly in his now-empty house. He hadn't heard anything from Yami since his mysterious command not to talk to Ryou on the phone.

_What's wrong with Ryou? He sounded quite odd when we were speaking before, but it was only for twenty seconds or so. Then Yami called me off again. We both got a phone call at the same time,_ he reminisced with a smile._ I wonder why he's keeping me in the dark like this. He sounded very nervous when he came back from changing. I wonder if he made the room more of a mess, _Yuugi thought astutely. He padded around the bend and into the room he shared with Yami when he was in a physical form._ Wouldn't mind sharing it with him all the time. Yeep. Scary thoughts. True thoughts, but scary thoughts. I'm only fifteen! Wow, he did a number on this place. Not that it wasn't a mess before, but still. Wow. _

Yuugi surveyed the mess of pleather, vinyl, buckles, and glitter. _I don't know how he wears this stuff. Man. He always seems to wear that sweatsuit. Eh, he's hot either way. I can think that! Fifteen-year-olds can think people are hot! We're old enough! I just gotta stop thinking about...um, other stuff. Yeah. Other stuff. Other stuff bad. I better get out of here,_ Yuugi decided, closing the door and leaning on it.

_Man. I need to talk to someone about this sort of thing. Pity Yami's out of the running on a consultation. Now there's a great conversation to have with your yami. "I keep thinking that I want to grab you and shag you against the wall, but you know, I'm only fifteen, so I'm beginning to think I need some serious help. So let's either get it on or put me in a padded room, whichever you'd like." Hey, maybe that could work! Wait, wasn't that kinda what Ryou was saying? Really unlike Ryou, that was._

Yuugi retrained his thoughts to more innocent things and wandered into the kitchen. _Soda. Yay. _He carefully flipped the tab on a can and slammed back half the soda inside with practiced ease._ Surge! Whee! _He decorously set the can down on the countertop and wandered around some more as the caffeine took effect, keeping him awake. _Wonder when Yami'll be back. _

Just then he heard knocking at the door.

_Oh, I bet I accidentally locked him out! _Yuugi thought and took off running. He screeched to a halt by the door and flung it open.

Ryou was sitting on his front stoop, a knife in one hand and a Duel Monsters deck in the other.

_And this would be an 'ooooohshit' moment, _Yuugi thought. "Hey, Ryou," he said. "What's up?"

"Your yami's not home, then," Ryou said breathily. It was the same odd, not-so-refined voice that he'd heard over the phone. "Pity, that. He's ever so sexy in that leather."

_Whoa!_ Yuugi thought. _Ryou hitting on Yami? No wonder Yami told me to hang up on him. He's scaring me. And dammit, Yami's mine!_ "He's not here."

"Well, us hikaris are all alone again, then," Ryou said. "Mine just ran out on me, and yours went after mine." The silvery-haired boy sighed tragically, flicking the flat of the knife against the knuckles of the hand holding the Duel Monsters deck pensively. "I'd suggest starting something now and making it a threesome at least when Yami arrives, but I don't think anyone would join me."

"Ryou," Yuugi said, startled. "What are you talking about?"

"Hm? Oh, you know, snogging, making out, making love, flat-out fucking, all that fun stuff. And of course, some sort of pain. That's half the enjoyment. You can't know pleasure unless you've been through hell to get there," Ryou said, licking the tip of the knife, then going back to hitting it against his knuckles. "The taste of the blood really makes people wild. It's ever so much fun."

"Er," Yuugi said haltingly. Ryou was damn _scary_ now. He was even worse than his bloodthirsty yami, in a way. "What's happened to you?" he found himself whispering.

Ryou tilted his head back and giggled, looking up at Yuugi. "Enlightenment? Now I see the world through..." he sighed reflectively, "...pink glasses. Or maybe purple. Or red. Some pretty color, I'm sure. But I was looking through black before. I couldn't see the colors. I couldn't appreciate the sensation of things, of being alive. Or of not being alive. It all depends, really," Ryou said, tilting his head to one side and pouting slightly. "The not being alive enhances my vitality, for sure. Why, my yami's not really alive anymore, and I'm so very..._alive_, for lack of a better word. Enlightened, yes. Empowered...ooh, I _like_ that..." Ryou smiled lazily, stretching slightly.

"How would you like that, Yuugi? No, you wouldn't want to hurt your yami like that. I couldn't do that. It wouldn't be _pure_. You wouldn't like it at all. You see, in a relationship like mine, someone has to be in a state of pure bliss. But the other's got to be unhappy. It has to be balanced. And I've been tortured long enough. I wanted..." Ryou's smile grew wider. "I wanted love, once. But now...all I want is pleasure and pain and madness and wonder..." He threw his arms out, narrowly missing Yuugi.

"I found love, yes...love of sensation. I mean it. I can run barefoot to your house and love everything I feel. Everything I think. Everything I am. Breathing is bliss," Ryou said with delight. "And things a normal person would find enrapturing..._ooh_." The silver-haired boy licked his lips slowly.

Yuugi was frozen in the doorway. _Oh, gods, what am I going to _do_? Ryou's gone _psycho_! And he's _here_! I don't want to set him off by calling Yami or anything, and that's kind of what Yami's dealing with anyway. I think I'd better just wait here 'til Yami gets back._

/Yami, whatever you're doing, _hurry_!/ was all Yuugi spared his attention to say. He then focused again on the strange creature that was sitting on his doorstep, too enthralled and afraid to take his mind off of him.

[-]

Yami froze in his tracks as he was trotting back home.

/Yami, whatever you're doing, _hurry_!/

Hikari, what is it? What's happening?he asked, deeply worried.

/No time to talk!/

Yuugi! Are you all right? _Yuugi_!

Yami then ran hell for leather towards the Kame Game Shop. _Not him, not him, not him, don't do anything to him..._

[-]

_I hope he _really_ hurries_, Yuugi thought, almost afraid to blink in case Ryou wigged out and went completely nuts. He was still talking dreamily about his new view of life, with several lewd suggestions thrown in.

There! Distant, but there. Running footsteps. Yuugi had no doubt as to the runner's identity._ It'll be safe soon. Thank you Ra, thank you God, thank you Buddha, thank you...um...Giant Post-It?_

"Ooh, your delicious yami is on the horizon," Ryou said, shading his eyes with his knife hand and peering down the street. "If he finds me here, I don't think a threesome will be in order. Blood, maybe, though. Blood is so nice, and it'll get all over your stoop. Won't that be beautiful?" Ryou asked, rising to his feet. Yuugi felt a shock of nervousness as the taller boy stretched languidly, then sashayed across the sidewalk. "But your yami will be so angry, and I don't want to do that." He turned fluidly and blew a kiss to Yuugi, then winked and faded into the shadows across the street.

As soon as he'd done that, the spell broke. Yuugi burst out onto the stoop and screamed in every way he could, _/"YAMI!"/_

The aforementioned pharaoh hurtled up to Yuugi and gripped his shoulders protectively, automatically pulling him closer and bending slightly to look at him more closely. "You're all right? Is anything wrong? What _happened_?"

"Ryou..." Yuugi said shakily. "Ryou happened."

"Bloody hell," Yami muttered. "He called?"

"No," Yuugi said. "He showed up on the doorstep, and I was too afraid to move. I didn't know what would set him off. He had a _knife_, Yami! I thought he was going to freaking kill me!"

Yami's eyes widened. "He didn't have Bakura's knife, did he?"

Yuugi shuddered. "I don't know."

"You've never had a chance to be acquainted with it? Pity. It's an excellent blade," came a cheerful voice from across the street.

Yuugi and Yami both looked over at the shadows, gripping each other by the shoulders, frozen in their pose of watching the figure melting in and out of the shadows.

Ryou waved joyfully at them with the knife. "He was _so_ angry when I took it, but then he got a little upset and left it with me, so I'm keeping it safe for him." Ryou giggled again and drew the flat of the blade across his throat sensuously, then shoved it into a pocket and held up his DM deck. "Now that you're reunited, you wonderful pair you, I'll let Yami do his devoted rescuer act. I know you've been wanting to do that for so long. I'm sorry my yami disappointed you. And _ooh_, you smell _wonderfully_ of ginger," Ryou piped up. "Yuugi must be in heaven. Lucky man." Ryou smiled slowly and drew a card from his deck, then turned it between two fingers. "Won't you entertain him and me, you delicious thing? Let's see you play with the Earl of Demise!" Ryou winked again and slithered back into the shadows.

Yami and Yuugi both stared as a decaying, sword-wielding fiend materialized in the street and began drifting towards them.

"Here," Yuugi said, holding out his deck to Yami, who wound an arm around his hikari's shoulders and drew a card. "Dark Magician!" The stronger Monster overpowered Ryou's fiend with ease.

"Oh, lovely!" Ryou called from wherever he was. "So _manly_!"

Yuugi bit back a near-irresistible urge to start bellowing "Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii'm a lumberjack and I'm o-kay..." and instead began backing towards the house, pulling Yami with him. "Let's go inside. _Now_," he whispered.

"Yes," Yami agreed. The two stumbled inside and locked the door, then ran for their room at once. With that door locked as well, the pair quickly locked the shutters and then barricaded the door.

"What's _happened_ to him?" Yuugi whispered.

Yami's eyes grew distant. "I don't know, but I intend to find out."

"Maybe I can help, too!" Yuugi said.

"Oh, aibou, I want to keep you out of this. If it affects you, too..." Yami winced at the very thought.

"Oh." Yuugi said. "I see."

Yami sat next to his hikari and slung an arm across his shoulders again. "Ra help whoever or whatever caused this," he murmured under his breath.

"Why?" Yuugi asked.

"Because Bakura's going to tear them limb from limb," Yami said frankly.

Yuugi nodded and leaned into his yami as the aftereffects of the Surge dwindled.

Outside, delighted, breathy laughter floated on the air, cloying and sweet and demonic.

[-]

"Hey, Yami?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think Ryou will ever go back to normal?" Yuugi asked softly. It was around one in the morning, an hour after Yami's return. They still didn't dare unblock the door or open the windows. Ryou had been stubborn at times when he was normal, to put it lightly. Thus, the pair had built a wall of the junk lying around on the floor all around them and were sitting in the middle of it, somewhat drowsily given the time and lack of caffeine.

"I hope so," Yami replied. "I don't want to be around that unscrupulous thief for any longer than necessary. And we're both going to die if we don't get coffee tomorrow morning."

"What are you doing with Bakura? What are you getting into without me, anyway?" Yuugi demanded fiercely.

Yami sighed. "Jounouchi, Bakura, and I are going to talk to Isis Ishtar tomorrow, hopefully when her pesky brother isn't in residence. The thief is staying at Jounouchi's house due to his injuries and his hikari problems."

"What?"

"He jumped through a closed second-story window, was hit by a car, then tackled me and fell down a flight of cement stairs," Yami recited for his incredulous hikari's benefit.

"Wow!" Yuugi exclaimed. Then his eyes narrowed. "Tackled _you_ and fell down a flight of cement stairs?"

"Erm. Yes," Yami said.

"...Why?"

"Er. I told him about Ryou flirting with me over the phone, and he kind of panicked," Yami said. If he hadn't been so unwilling to disturb the very comfortable pose that he and Yuugi were in, he would have outright squirmed. "And then he went all melodramatic about losing Ryou, I told him to shut up, he went off in _more_ melodramatic fits of tears, and we didn't get anything done."

"Ryou and his yami? Oh my God! They would be so cute together, just like – erp!" Yuugi hastily bit off his words and also bit his tongue. "Ow! Shit!"

"Just like what?" Yami asked, unconsciously hugging Yuugi closer.

"Er. Nothing!" Yuugi replied hastily.

"Tell," Yami pleaded in a most undignified way. A brilliant idea occurred, and he followed through with it. "Te-ell." Poke. "Tell meee." Poke poke poke. "Tell me!" Poke poke poke poke TACKLE.

"Ack! Okay, okay, okay! Er," Yuugi said again, turning a fascinating shade of fluorescent magenta and gaining a sweatdrop the size of an ostrich egg. "...us?"

"Us?" _Ommigodsholyshitonmylifeasapharaohdon'tfuckthisup!_

"Sorry. It just kind of slipped out," Yuugi apologized.

Yami grinned like an idiot. "Don't apologize."

Yuugi stared at him. _Well, he could like me. Or he could be delirious from lack of sleep. Better not risk it. _"You're not mad at me?" he asked, swiftly donning his Puppy Dog Look #1, The Irresistible 'Please Don't Kill Me' Look of DOOOOOOM! for good " Yami stammered. _Damn. He looks amazingly sexy when he's nervous. There is definitely a gene for narcissism or incest or something that yamis and hikaris share. This is slightly disturbing, but I guess I could just go with it._

"Yami? Something wrong?" Yuugi asked.

Rather than answer, Yami ignored all the modern laws of dignity, grabbed his hikari, and started an Official Royal Game of Tonsil Hockey (tm).

_Oh yeah. Must listen to my conscience a lot more these days, Yami thought after a very interesting interval of time._

"I'll take that as a 'no'," Yuugi said, sounding rather winded. "I think I'm going to need my inhaler."

"I can give you mouth-to-mouth," Yami suggested slyly.

"I bet you can."

Interesting activities promptly resumed.

"Bloody hell!" Yami announced about ten minutes later.

"Mmmh?" Yuugi mmmhed.

"You don't feel weird, do you?" Yami asked frantically.

"Define 'weird'," Yuugi said hazily.

"Like you want to go out and kill me and then screw my dead body senseless," Yami said, trying to think of the best way to describe what he was talking about. _If...if Yuugi..._

"Um. No dead bodies are in my thoughts at all," Yuugi said. "Wait a...do you think...me? Acting like Ryou?!"

"We thought that snogging triggered it," Yami said.

Yuugi shot him a 'oh get real you royal prat' look. This look, being infrequently used, wasn't numbered.

"And apparently, we were wrong," Yami found himself explaining.

"Want to make sure?"

"Good-o. Though I'm not sure I'd be complaining if you weren't psychotic but otherwise acted like Ryou."

"Oh really?" Yuugi looked definitely intrigued. "I don't know if I ever told you, but I'm really good at mimicry..."

Psychopathic hikaris, hysterical tomb robbers, strange and psychic women, and progressing slowly in a new relationship were all promptly forgotten at this point in time.

Well, Yuugi _is_ fifteen.

* * *

Fluffy: I lied, we condensed these two chapters as well. Bwaa.

**a very angry person: **Ginger ale thrown out the window fuuuuuuun.

**LightOfDarkness: **Um...I'm thinking about it...really...

**x20Deepx: **Yay! Thankies!

**S. A. Bonasi: **Unique. Unique is gooooooood.

**Luke SkyWolf: **sets out to restrain Ryou

**Sydney:** She's about twelve years old and deranged. Need I say more?

**Sailor Comet: **It's six in the morning while writing this, with no caffeine. Mine is a long story. And a pathetic one.

**moonnymph: **Yay! People read the chapter titles! I read a lot of Patricia C. Wrede.

**Keira:** I was once attacked by a can of soda.

**DJ Silence Yuy:** Wasn't me.

**Chibi:** Bakura liked it too.

**Labannya: **Someone else reads the chapter titles! Oooh, and can I borrow your Giant Mallet of Doomation?

**Carolyn: **But I'll put it back together! Promise!

**silver-fanged-dragon: **Thanks for reviewing!

**firedrayon97: **Comin' riiiiiight up.

**higashikaze: **Yay. Silver-haired bishies rock.

**Alyssa-Anime-Angel: **Ryou in this chapter. Much MUCH Ryou in this chapter.

**Saturn Imp: **immediately both stop what they're doing and begin singing

**Fyredra **bounces round and throws glitter Wheeeeee!

**hotaruchan27: **Pixy Stix! Yay!

**malik'sgurl: **copies it down, vanishes briefly, then reappears Gave your review to Fate, even though she's unconscious. Thanks for reviewing!

**Chibi: **PLUSHIE! PLUSHIE! YAY! dances and huggles plushie

**molten-amber: **AUGH! Not the chibi eyes! I'm scarred for life! faints

**FluffCat: **snicker

**FukaiMori: **Hee. nn

**Sailor Comet:** Aww.

**silver-fanged-dragon:** Now you've torn it. Best not tell Ryou.

**S. A. Bonasi: **If Yugi's fifteen and 5', then he's my age and my height. And that's just not on. Everyone else can be 16, though.

**Ri-chan:** I've heard tell of a petition for Ryou to lap dance.

Duel: Go forth and...do stuff.


	8. In Which Bakura Is Not A Morning Person

Fate: La la lala laaa! dances in a circle

Disclaimer: Go forth and hopskiptwirl with the lawyers!

* * *

**[7] In Which Bakura Is Not A Morning Person**

Jounouchi woke at two a.m. inexplicably. Normally he would have promptly buried his face in a pillow and tried to suffocate himself to sleep before he remembered the usefulness of breathing. However, when one has a psychopathic tomb robber somewhere in one's house, one ought to investigate. Moreso if said psychopathic tomb robber has a sex-crazed stalker.

So, cursing the world with less range of languages but of equal inventiveness to Bakura, Jounouchi more or less fell out of his bed, untangled himself from the bedclothes, and walked into the door in a vain effort to leave the room.

After about five minutes, Jounouchi figured out that opening the door might be conducive to getting back to sleep more quickly.

_After this week, I'm never housing anyone who I can't trust to sleep like a normal mortal again. Ever_, Jounouchi swore to himself as he padded down the short hallway, looking in all of the doors. No silver-haired people of either the psychopathic or sex-crazed variety were seen. Nor, thank God, the Funny-Bunny obsessed sort.

_If Pegasus shows up... _Jounouchi trailed off and shuddered rather than think about what could possibly happen. This involuntary movement promptly made him fall over. _Ow. This is in the realm of 'major suckyness'. Oh yes._

Jounouchi wobbled to his feet again and plodded into the main room.

Where he promptly tripped over someone.

The blond boy rolled over onto his back, massaging his nose, and cussed Bakura out thoroughly. "Why do I always have to trip over you? What'd I do to deserve this?"

It was only when Jounouchi fell silent that he noticed that Bakura wasn't responding. At all.

O...kay... Jounouchi promptly thought, sitting up with some difficulty and trying not to kick the unconscious thief in the head.

He was peering critically at the black-and-silver heap of tomb robber when a hand shot out of the pile, grabbed his throat, and tugged his face into a nose-to-nose position with Bakura.

"Sod the fuck off," Bakura breathed. "You _will_ leave me to my nightmares. And you _will_ forget what you're doing here if I have to use the Ring to do it."

Jounouchi was unable to speak or nod, so he merely did the only thing he could to affirm his understanding. "Gaarghk."

"Good."

"Gurrrlk."

With that, Bakura released Jounouchi's neck and disappeared again into the huddle of black and silver.

_Definitely not a morning person either,_ Jounouchi noted, rubbing his throat and struggling to his feet. He snatched up the pink fuzzy afghan from the end of the couch, dumped it unceremoniously over the knot Bakura had curled himself into, then quitted the room with as much haste as a seven-eighths-worth-asleep person could muster.

In other words, Jounouchi tripped over Bakura again on his way out, got lost in the kitchen, and fell asleep on the floor in his room when he missed collapsing on the bed by two feet.

When he finally opened his eyes, it was to the scream of, "IF THESE DAMN BIRDS DON'T SHUT THE FUCK UP, THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT OF TWITTERING LITTLE FEATHERY LUMPS IN THE GRAVEYARD!!"

The birds fell silent after some startled peeping and a stray squawk.

"_Much_ better."

Jounouchi decided he'd better get up before all of the indigenous wildlife in his neighborhood vanished into oblivion.

He stumbled out of his room and straight into the shower. When he emerged and padded into the kitchen, the first thing he noticed was that Bakura must have showered before him, due to the only partially dry silver hair hanging down around his shoulders in the requisite tufted snarls. The second thing he noticed was that Bakura was contentedly chewing on something raw and bloody.

Bakura turned and looked at him blankly for a minute. "Something for you?" he finally asked nastily, licking the blood off of one hand after nearly inhaling the last of whatever poor unsuspecting creature the mauled bit of flesh had once been.

"Llp. No," Jounouchi said, valiantly keeping a straight face and swallowing hard. Blood from injuries he could deal with. Blood from dead things being eaten very messily was another thing entirely.

Bakura merely shrugged, rolled his eyes, and began licking his other hand clean.

It was at this point that someone rapped on the door.

"Dammit. It's the bastard," Bakura said irritably. "This place needs one of those windows where you can pour boiling oil on people you hate down below."

Rather than answer, Jounouchi swiftly left the kitchen and opened the door.

"Do you have Motrin?" Yami asked.

Jounouchi blinked. "Yes." He about-faced and marched back into the bathroom, in search of painkillers, with Yami tagging along behind him. Thus, only Bakura noticed how oddly Yami was moving.

He merely watched the pharaoh over one bloody hand without blinking until the other boy noticed him. "What?"

"Let me guess, you gave the last of the Motrin to your hikari. How sweet," Bakura said acidly. "And then you walked all the way here, the very picture of a martyred and uxorious lover..."

There was a muffled noise from the bathroom that sounded like a cross between a squeak and a laugh as Yami turned a funny shade of fuschia and sweatdropped.

"Pharaoh got la-aid, Pharaoh got la-aid..." Bakura taunted. "Someone's quite the pedophile around here. And somewhat incestuous. I knew there was something funny about royalty."

"You're just jealous that I get more action than you do," Yami shot back childishly.

"How is that possible? I'm being fucking _stalked_!"

"Fucking is right."

"You should talk."

"Well, look, it's not _my_ fault!"

"Oh, it's Ryou's fault then? Or maybe Hathor's!"

"It _was_ Ryou's fault! Your hikari has either made off with your demon deck or – "

"_My_ demon deck? We both play with demon decks! How can you tell the difference? You don't care who's playing against you, you just go and blast them to death with your Ra card anyway!"

"Motrin!"

The last interjection was Jounouchi poking his head out of the bathroom and throwing the aforementioned medicine at the pharaoh.

Yami blinked confusedly and was hit squarely on the forehead with the plastic bottle, right where the Sennen Eye showed up at times. Ignoring the thief's snickering, he began to try to open the cap.

After about five minutes in which Bakura's laughter escalated into full rolling-on-the-floor hysterics, Yami finally slumped onto one of the bar stools in the kitchen next to Bakura's former seat and slammed the Motrin bottle down on the countertop. Rather than curse inventively as Bakura and Jounouchi were wont to do, he merely glowered royally at the infuriating little plastic bottle. "It...won't...open..." he finally growled.

Jounouchi burst out laughing in the most tactless manner possible, snatched up the Motrin bottle, and held it in front of the pharaoh's nose. "Read the instructions on the cap."

Yami stared at it, slightly cross-eyed, then snatched the bottle from Jounouchi's hand and opened the cap, still muttering. He then poured the entire bottle out onto the counter.

"You can take one and a half of those pills," Jounouchi said, eyeing Yami critically, proffering a cup of water. "And you have to eat something when you've taken them."

"I'm _not_ sharing," Bakura said, having scrambled to his feet and leaning out of the window.

"Sharing what?" Yami asked.

Bakura merely grabbed the sill with one hand and a knife from the rack with the other, stabbing at something off to the left of him. There was a panicked squawk from the outside. This was quickly followed by Bakura slithering back through the window with a small bird impaled on the knife. "Mine." The look on his face said plainly,_ Make one move towards this bird and you meet a similar fate, and this also applies to my hikari when we're done._

"Yours," Yami agreed with a quick nod, and swallowed the pills.

"Yours," Jounouchi echoed, throwing Yami an orange. "Eat it."

Yami ignored Bakura picking feathers off of the bird carcass and casually throwing them in his direction. He directed his attention to peeling the orange. After three feathers had lodged themselves in his hair, Yami began just as casually throwing pieces of orange peel at the tomb robber.

"Prat," Bakura muttered, coolly chewing on a wing bone and flicking a bloody feather at the pharaoh.

Yami ate an orange slice. "Twit." He deftly sent a piece of orange peel sailing over to smack the thief in the face.

"Inbred buffoon."

"Son of a camel."

"Painted transvestite."

"I do _not_ look like a girl in these clothes!"

"My point exactly."

"BUGGER YOU, SON OF A SAND WORM, FOR A FLAMING, POX-ROTTED, MILDEWED, FESTERING VULTURE! AND MAY IT EAT YOUR DUST AND SPIT ON YOUR BONES!" Bakura screamed suddenly, leaping at the pharaoh with a knife in one hand.

Jounouchi blinked at the pair from his perch on one of the other bar stools. The two Egyptians were now rolling around on the kitchen floor. Bakura was trying to skewer Yami and the pharaoh was trying to squirm free of the tomb robber's attempts to pin him to the floor for easier disembowelment.

"Oi! Break it up, will you?" Jounouchi shouted down at them.

"Bite me!" Bakura snarled. "Yow! Bastet's teeth, that _hurt_! Are you _rabid_?" he then howled as Yami seized the opportunity and chomped down on his arm. The thief shook the pharaoh off and rolled across the floor, still clutching the bloody knife and scattering feathers and orange peel.

"Someone's cleaning this up and it isn't going to be me," Jounouchi said conversationally. "Are you two done with your breakfast?"

Bakura and Yami glowered at each other.

"I don't care if you're not, you are," Jounouchi decided for them both. Bakura flicked a bird bone at him without looking up.

"Uncultured savage," Yami muttered.

Bakura ignored him and rose grandly to his feet, stalking out of the room and licking the knife clean. He paused in the doorway, then turned back to look at Yami, still struggling to his feet. "And it was a _stupid_ sand worm." With that, he calmly quitted the kitchen.

"He...I..._gah_..." Yami said expressively, waving his arms for emphasis.

_One round for the tomb robber, _Jounouchi thought, towing the spluttering pharaoh out the door after Bakura. _Did he put that knife back?_

[-]

Bakura was busy trying to figure out what in bloody blazes he was supposed to do with the Millennium Eye.

_I'm not leaving it in that house, even if I was still there,_ he decided right off, beginning to lick the knife he'd stolen from Jounouchi clean as he padded barefoot down the shadowy side of the street towards the museum. The healer boy and the annoying pharaoh were somewhere within fifty meters. This normally would have counted as being in his personal bubble and worthy of him chasing whoever-it-was down and killing them, but he was a little preoccupied.

_I so can not have this thing on me when I'm talking to the Ishtar girl. I might as well plant it on the pharaoh for all the good it'll...do...me..._

_I should _so_ plant it on the pharaoh bastard! And then steal it back! Yeah! It'll get him in trouble with the seer's yami. Pity the pharaoh gave back the Tauk after all that weirdness with Marik; I could have gotten a double haul when I rob him blind. _

_Heh. Now all I have to do is make sure the pharaoh doesn't find it before either we're out of there or he gets caught with it, and I'm golden._

Well, aren't you sneaky? I like that in a man.

"WAAAAUGH!" Bakura promptly forgot all tomb robber training and dignity and leaped three feet into the air screaming.

"What was that?" Yami asked.

"_Shut_ up!" Bakura retorted.

You've got competition, yami mine. He looks good enough to eat,Ryou remarked.

/I sealed you off!/ Bakura screamed.

Did you, now? I hadn't noticed. Now, why would you want to do a thing like that?/ Ryou inquired.

/To get you out of my head, you sick, perverted mortal!/ Bakura screeched.

But I like your head. It's pretty. And wet. I like wet things.

Bakura considered screaming like a girl.

/Wait a minute...you can _see _me?/

Of course, yami mine. I don't want to let you out of my sight. You're too breathtaking. I don't want anyone to get in your way.

Bakura thence considered dunking his head in a bucket of the stingy goop that the healer-boy insisted he smear on his gashes daily, to prevent the cut from going putrid. _Wonder if it'll clean Ryou up any._

"Bakura, is something wrong?" Yami asked.

"Of course there's something wrong!" Bakura shrieked as Yami drew closer. "There's a bloody pervert in my head spying on me!" _Just come closer, asshole. I can stuff this Eye down the back of your shirt and punch you in the nose at the same time if you do. And then maybe run away._

"Look, Bakura--" Yami began, moving even closer.

_That counts as being within my _personal_ personal bubble!_ Bakura thought, seething. _Time to make him move. And time to run away. Yes. _He swiftly launched a hard left to Yami's jaw and tackled him, dragging the Eye from his pocket and shoving it down the back of the buckled monstrosity Yami called a shirt. _There's enough metal and capes back there that no one will notice anything._

"I have this archaic little belief, pharaoh," Bakura spat. "It's the one where people have this little thing we like to call personal space. Now get out of it, so we can get away from my hikari, who is probably following us."

"EEK!" came a squawk from a few feet behind them. Bakura and Yami both promptly craned their necks to look.

Ryou was clinging cheerfully to Jounouchi, who was leaping around, arms and legs flailing, and screaming at the top of his lungs. Or, um, making falsetto squeaky noises.

"Ryou! Release Jounouchi!" Yami commanded, trying to think of the best option under the circumstances.

If Bakura'd had 'thinking of the best option under the circumstances' suggested to him, his retort would have been along the lines of 'fuck that!' So, he promptly made good use of his own tried and very well liked approach:

Step one: Tackle.

Step two: Scream.

Step three: Repeat.

Simple, ne?

Bakura promptly leapt at Jounouchi and slammed not only his target, but his hikari to the ground as well.

"Hello there," Ryou whispered, smiling and raising one hand to trace one of Bakura's facial cuts, reopened by his sudden movements.

Yami and hikari completely ignored the blonde boy sandwiched between them as they stared at each other, one in undisguised horror and the other in undisguised lust.

Ryou's smile grew into a broad smirk as he pulled his yami's head down and began kissing him passionately.

"Um...guys?" Jounouchi said. "Ryou? Bakura? I'm still here! Yami! Help! Get me out of here! Ack!"

Ryou gently broke his liplock with his yami and turned to whisper in Jounouchi's ear. "Care to join us?"

"Nooooooo!" Jounouchi screeched. "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!" He turned his head violently away from Ryou. "Yaaaaamiiiiiii!"

At that precise moment, Bakura's eyes dropped closed and he fell heavily off of Jounouchi and onto the pavement with a soft noise, silvery hair splashed over his face and bleeding slightly from his feet and face.

"Ryou!" Yami bellowed, hauling Jounouchi roughly to his feet now that Bakura was sprawled on the pavement out of the way. He stalked forwards and put a booted foot on Ryou's chest, preventing him from rising.

Ryou merely smiled sweetly. "Thanks for the view, Yami," he said softly.

Yami, to give him credit, did not immediately retreat. He merely flinched and hastily averted his eyes. "Go get Bakura," he whispered to Jounouchi.

"Erk," Jounouchi merely said, just as Yami's legs were yanked out from under him.

"Don't. Touch. My. Hikari." Bakura snarled, sitting up. He glared at Ryou. "Get out of here, you little power leech. Go on, yadonushi! Get out of my sight! I can't stand the sight of you anymore, Ryou! I hate what you've become! You bloody pervert, get _away_ from me!" he screamed as Ryou reached out for him. He rolled to his feet and staggered back a few feet. "Don't hurt him. Only _I _get to hurt him!" he snapped hysterically at Yami. "Only me! Only me! I'm the only one who _ever_ gets to touch him!"

"Jealous much?" Ryou inquired softly, smirking.

"You little – !"

Jounouchi neatly arrested Bakura's flight by snagging him mid-leap and tucking him under one arm. "Museum. Now," he said to Yami. "Let Ryou go and let's haul ass," he added, dragging a fighting, screaming tomb robber._ I'm going to be black and blue tonight._

Yami stepped away from Ryou, then stopped. "Only for Yuugi will I do this. Only because I won't kill a friend. But you have become something worse than your yami. And I think it's about time you changed back."

Ryou giggled. "Want to know what I think, you sexy thing you?"

Yami turned on his heel and stalked away.

Ryou kept giggling. "My yami stuffed a Millennium Item down your shirt, that's what I think!" he said softly to himself as the trio disappeared down the road. He hopped to his feet, stretched, rotated his bad ankle, and grinned cheerfully. "Museum time!"

* * *

Fluffy: Let's get it starte-e-ed, let's get it starte-e-ed...what? I watched the NBA finals!

**Sky-Pirate-Tat: ** Mmmmhmmm...it is that...

**moonnymph: **I am no good with fluff, so Fluffy-hikari wrote the end of the last chapter.

**Sailor Comet: **Length is easy, fluff is hard. Well, that's me. Fluffy thinks it's the other way 'round.

**Dark Millenia: **We're sure Ryou's willing.

**hotaruchan27: **SQUEE! Plushie!

**Alyssa-Anime-Angel: **I don't think either of them minded very much...

**Saturn Imp: **You like weird? We write weird.

**firedraygon97: **searches for a Ryou figurine or something

**Kaial and Luke Skywolf: **We'll keep them in line. Promise.

**LightofDarkness: **Oops. Well, he _could_ have British influences from some random person. Lemony smut? Errr...blinkblink ...not very good at that, sorry.

**Chibi: **SQUEE!! Another plushie!

**molten-amber: **The cause is one of the few things I'm certain about in this story, being as it's gone in a really weird direction. And it will be revealed...sometime?

**StarFlower Sakura: **So do we. nn

**higashikaze: **Sorry the update took so long. Damn writers' block, damn school, etc. FOUR MORE WEEKS OF SCHOOL AND THEN FREEDOM!! dances

**CaRoLyN CsOhJv: **Italics and bold and underlining and all that fun stuff is actually pretty easy, if you have MS Word or a similar word processor. You type it out as you want it to look, save it as html, and then you're set to go. The formatting stays. Ehhh... sweatdrops ...sorry about the time length. Fast updater during the end of the school year I am not.

**Fyredra: **The pain medicine of choice for yami/hikari pairings, mostly used in the context seen below. Also used to cue in taunting from the surrounding characters.

**Little Brat Yami Bakura: **waves Thanks for the faves list bit! Hope you got enough sleep!

**Yami) White Rain: **Something more for you to read when you wake up! Wow, I seem to be drawing the sleepy people here...I have Mountain Dew if you'd like some...

Duel: Blerg. Do something.


	9. In Which Isis Ishtar Recieves A Call

Fate: Bwahaha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Disclaimer: Buh?

* * *

**[8] In Which Isis Ishtar Receives A Phone Call**

Isis Ishtar was inwardly blessing the poker face she had cultivated during her years living with a more-than-slightly-deranged younger brother and a bloodthirsty yami born of evil thoughts. It really came in handy at times.

Especially when the resident reincarnated pharaoh came flying through the door to her Egyptian exhibit and bolted right up to her, screaming about evil hikaris and sex fiends.

And even more so when one of the pharaoh's hikari's duelist friends was scrambling after him, looking rather green in the face and holding a familiar-looking, fighting, screaming, silver-haired boy under one arm.

One hand rose up to touch the Tauk at her neck almost without her noticing.

I think the Mongol hordes would have been quieter coming in,her yami said wonderingly. Aset and she had been on friendlier terms since her attempt to get on with her life unhindered by shadow powers. It hadn't exactly worked, especially since her brother was practically 'shadow powers' incarnate. And then there was the whole balance wossname to be considered. But Isis definitely got points for trying.

/I wouldn't be surprised./ "My pharaoh," she said aloud as Yami no Yuugi came skidding up to a halt in front of her, inclining her head slightly. "Please, control your friend."

The blonde dropped the silver-haired boy as soon as she finished speaking. The black-clad teen took an angered swipe at the blonde's legs with a rather large, sharp knife. The blonde made an 'eep' sort of noise and leapt straight up into the air, landing artlessly on the floor in a heap. The silver-haired boy snarled and flipped his hair out of his face as he flicked the knife menacingly at the boy. "Don't touch me."

"So. It is you," Isis found herself saying to the yami of the boy her brother had destroyed.

"Hn," the yami said, and began stalking around the displays. "You know what? I stole this! And this, too," he added, stabbing at various items with a pale forefinger. His nails were filed into points, she noted. "I don't know how you got a hold of them. I guess someone stole them from me when I got my soul stuck in some damn gold jewelry. Fucking pharaoh. Destroy my fucking town, will you?"

"He's a little cranky," the blonde noted. "Hiya, Isis. Hope you remember me. I'm Jounouchi. The thief's Bakura. You know Yami pretty well, don't you? We have a problem."

"I am aware of that," Isis replied.

"Well? Are you going to do anything?" Bakura piped up, running one finger along the flat of his knife.

Isis tilted her head to one side. "I heard you had a problem. I didn't know what it was."

"My hikari's gone crazy," Bakura said flatly. "He's everything I could never dream of being all gone wrong."

Isis got a very peculiar look on her face. "Really now."

"Really now," Bakura repeated.

"Excuse me," Isis said abruptly, striding from the room. "Don't touch anything!" she yelled over her shoulder.

She flung herself down the stairs, snatched up her phone, and began punching numbers so hard she almost broke a finger.

"Hey, babe!"

Isis made a face. "Eisei, this is serious. Get me your hikari. Or your brother. Or anyone but you!"

"Aww." Clunk. "Hikariiiiii! Your girlfriend's calliiiiiiing!"

"Dammit, shut up!" Shadi bellowed from somewhere in the background. "Isis?"

"Remember what happened?" Isis asked abruptly. "You know the deal."

"Yeah. It went away somewhere. We never found where," Shadi replied, sounding mystified.

"I just found it," Isis said tersely. "It didn't leave us, just our circle."

"Is it Malik?"

"Gods no," Isis said, her heart racing. "Not yet. Do you have an estimate on how long?"

"Do I have an estimate? Woman, this is the first I've heard of this since – Kaisei, we need to have a _talk!"_

Isis snickered. "Look, I'm at the museum. Come find me. Aset keeps asking where I've put my big-eyed part-time boyfriend."

"Uh huh. I'm sure. Be right there."

"_Hurry._" Isis put the phone down and looked over her shoulder. _Nothing._ _I'm imagining things._

Big-eyed part-time boyfriend?Aset piped up.

/Your very words./

I was drunk,

/So was I,/ Isis retorted.

I still have first dibs though,Aset said wistfully.

/Yes, yes,/ Isis replied as she finished her ascent up the stairs and pelted through the door. "I think I know what's going on and I'm going to get it fixed. I've asked someone to help me."

"Who is it?" Jounouchi asked, turning to look at Isis. "I mean, we're probably going to have to keep an eye out for them and all. And please don't tell me it's Pegasus, because that would be just creepy."

Bakura twitched slightly. "Isn't he dead?"

"Is he?" Yami asked curiously.

Bakura twitched again. "I don't know. Is he?"

There's something rather odd about Pegasus and that boy-thief Bakura,Aset concluded.

/They're both completely insane,/ Isis said dryly.

I meant that there's something they have in common,Aset argued.

/What, aside from the whole Millennium Item bit?/

Yes, of course! It's like they had something in common.Aset's speculating powers went into hyperdrive as her speech slowed.

Isis decided to ignore her. "I believe that Mr. Pegasus is incapacitated for the moment at least," she said gravely, albeit evasively.

"Thank you, priestess-seer girl, we would have never figured that out without your help," Bakura snarled.

_Hm. Time to get off of this topic before he tries to kill someone. I have a hard enough time documenting the legitimate bodies down here that I don't want to bother with more extras. I'm running out of excuses and my brother's got someone soaking in the salt baths right now. _"Is there any way that you think I can help you myself, knowing what little that I do? I would like a fuller explanation at the very least."

"You have a yami, right?" Jounouchi asked.

"Yes," Isis acknowledged.

Damn straight,Aset added.

/Thank you, Yami, now please hush./

"Well, don't kiss her or anything, because then you'll go insane. Right?" Jounouchi asked triumphantly.

Bakura made a peculiar growling noise as Yami turned an interesting shade of fuschia. "Not...quite."

Jounouchi looked slightly affronted. "What's wrong with my explanation?" Then he looked at Yami again. "Oh. Oh. Is...is he..."

"Oh, Ra, I hope not," Yami said quickly, gaining a rather large sweatdrop on the side of his head as he said this.

Correctly interpreting Isis's confused look, Bakura jerked one thumb at the other two boys and said, "The bastard pharaoh screwed his hikari royally last night. As far as I can tell, the hikari isn't a highly disturbed sex fiend. Mine, however, is. He kissed me, things went boom, and Ryou went bonkers. I want my hikari back, because he's been trying to kill me and I don't like it much."

"And he looooooooooves – " Jounouchi interjected.

"SHUT UP!" Out came the knife again.

Ooo, sharp pointy things,Aset said. Well, she was a yami.

"....wibble...." Jounouchi was now cowering under a glass case. "You'll split your stitches!" he yelped in a display of extreme and sudden levelheadedness.

"So. Your hikari is disturbed. Would you like a straitjacket? One of the spares I keep for Malik and Marik should fit Ryou," Isis said coolly, turning away from Bakura.

Oooh, you're devilish,Aset said. The boy wants to tie his hikari down and screw him senseless, and you're offering a straitjacket?

/Yes, I am. It keeps my brother quiet. Brothers. Whichever,/ Isis said maliciously.

Uh huh. And what about keeping me quiet?

/!!/

Aset snickered and retreated into her soul room.

Isis rolled her eyes. _Now I know why the pharaoh gave me back my Item._

"Straitjacket?" Bakura asked, looking puzzled.

Jounouchi was having fits of hysterical laughter and rolling about on the floor during this exchange. "It...it ties your hands...it ties you up...oh my God..." He dissolved into wordless laughter once more.

Bakura's expression had turned from confused to horrified in less than two seconds. "No!"

"So no straitjacket then," Isis said coolly.

"Llp. No."

_Well, that's got him cowed,_ Isis congratulated herself internally. "I'm playing with you, Bakura-thief, because what happened to your hikari already happened to me."

Bakura's head flew up. "_What?"_

The phone rang distantly from downstairs.

"I''ll explain in a tick. Don't break anything, don't touch anything, and don't kill anyone." Isis instinctively rattled off her cautionary statement that she used before leaving her brother alone anywhere and bolted for the staircase. _Why I leave these people alone I will never know._

Do you think it's your part-time boyfriend, then?Aset asked.

/Maybe./ Isis hit the ground running and skidded to a halt in front of the phone, white robe and hair flying. She took a moment to smooth her clothing, then picked up the phone.

"Isis..." The voice was soft, teasing. "Don't worry about your clothing. You look beautiful as always..."

Isis pulled the phone away from her ear, stared at it briefly, then returned it to its former position. "This is the Domino City Museum. May I ask who is speaking?"

"I'm so hurt, Isis! You don't remember me? You've even got my yami upstairs! Tell me, Isis...what use do you find for straitjackets? I think they're so much fun. They can't even fight back! All they do is squirm and cry and scream. Oooh, and there's usually some blood, too."

"Ryou?" Isis's forehead creased as she reached back to smooth some of her hair.

One cold hand wrapped around her wrist and returned her unresisting arm to her side. The other hand traveled from her shoulder to her hair and began finger-combing it out. The whisper sounded in both her ear and the phone. "You have such lovely hair, Isis. Like silk. It feels a lot like yami's..."

_Oh shit._

Isis slowly hung up the phone, then whirled around and shoved Ryou away from her. She stumbled back and around the desk, then along the wall and towards the stairs. Ryou kept following her, holding aloft the strands of hair that he'd ripped loose from her skull and smiling. "Isis...why run away? I'm harmless little Ryou...just like always..." he said breathily, giggling slightly on the last three words.

"S-somebody help me," Isis stammered, backing up some more and holding her hands out in front of her, feeling panicked. "Oh, please..._somebody please help me!"_

There was something dangerous about this new Ryou.

Something deadly dangerous.

Isis?

/Yami! Help me! Now!/

Isis? _Isis!_

There was a loud slamming noise as Aset flung her soul room door open and hurled herself out into the real world.

Ryou, amazingly enough, was completely unfazed with being suddenly face-to-face with a tall, dark-haired Egyptian girl wearing golden robes and with flaming red eyes. "You stay away from my hikari."

"And you get away from mine!" came the screech from the stairs.

Isis's eyes slanted over to the doorway. Bakura was stalking over to Ryou, eyes ablaze in red, clutching his knife resolutely. Jounouchi and the pharaoh were huddled by the doorframe, gaping at the scene with mouths wide open.

Bakura quite calmly walked over to Ryou and shoved him away violently enough to send him into the wall about fifteen feet away. "Don't move, hikari. Don't speak. Don't make a pass at anyone, or I will pick up your tutoring where I left off."

Ryou looked stunned, for once. "But I'm – "

"You stole power from me. It doesn't mean you rule me," Bakura said tensely.

Ryou blinked. "But it does..." He smiled slowly. "...yami."

"Enough!" Aset finally said loudly, pulling Isis behind her. "Isis has been pretending nothing's gone wrong with the balance of shadow powers because of what she went through. I know better. You two have royally fucked things up," she said pointedly to the two silver-haired boys bonded together by the Millennium Ring. "I don't know what you've done or how you did it, but you've somehow decimated the purity of your hikari," Aset informed Bakura. "And I don't mean physical purity. I mean that there's something mental going on in there. I'm not speaking as an outsider. It happened to us. I'm telling you the truth, here. He did some of it, but _you_ started it."

"I...did this...I..." Bakura did a very nice, albeit unintentional impersonation of a fish out of water. "I didn't...I didn't...no..." The thief slumped to his knees, staring bleakly at the wall.

Ryou giggled and jumped to his feet. "That was fun!" he exclaimed. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to his unresponsive yami's hair, then vanished into the shadows.

"Where'd he go?" Aset demanded.

"Into the shadows, where he belongs," Bakura said tonelessly. "Where I sent him."

Needless to say, Jounouchi and Yami no Yuugi were still gaping.

Aset wordlessly laced her fingers through her hikari's, pulling them both back towards the stairs. The pharaoh blinked, gaped a little more intently, then dragged Jounouchi back, his eyes widening.

Those black threads...

Almost as soon as the door had slammed closed behind the four as the group hustled up the stairs, Bakura threw out his arms to the shadows creeping up on him and screamed bloody murder.

* * *

Fluffy: Tired. Bleh.

**Little Brat Yami Bakura: **Evil birds! Evil! mnch mnch But tasty!

**Kitten: **Don'tcha just love role reversals?

**Celtic Guardian Princess: F**aves? Mweeeeeeee!

**a very angry person: **Sadly, I am not good with fluff, and my hikari doesn't do the whole length bit. Um...the plumbing in hell's kitchen blew up. Is that a good excuse for the lateness?

**Lady K.:**twitch Noo! Not yaio! Anything but the dreaded YAIO! snickers

**Saturn: **Um. That's not good. proffers tissues

**Chibi: **More plushies! sparkly eyes

**higashikaze:** Guess who's back...right, shoot me now.

**Yami) White Rain: ** He's fun like this.

**molten-amber: **I love small animals. For breakfast.

**Kaial and Luke Skywolf: **Mweeheehee...this will be useful when a large number of yamis assemble and...and...I'll tell you later. ;;

**Gyakutenno Megami: **Wow...lookit all the pretty reviews...

**Fyredra: **ANOTHER PLUSHIE!! Yami/Pineapple? blink blink Okay then!

**Shamanic Guardian Lena: **Yay, people are amused.

**Cherry: **flyingtackleglomps Fave story? Fave author? blinks happily I've been elevated to the status of _my_ fave stories and authors? blinks happily again, goes swirly-eyed, and faints

**firedraygon97:** I live to confuse.

**Slyphie Andrella: ** Thank you!

Duel: Yo. You're good at this. Keep it up.


	10. In Which Shadi Nearly Gains A Sex Toy

Fate: Still with us? Hurrah!

Disclaimer: I am the Egg-Man!

* * *

**[9] In Which Shadi Nearly Gains A Sex Toy**

_I don't understand... _

Bakura was sprawled on his back, exhausted from his mental and physical breakdown. _I don't understand anything anymore. I used to be so certain that if I didn't know what was going on, I could hate it, but now I can't hate...I can't think...I can't do anything anymore. It's all just so wrong, and I'm the one who made it that way. _

_Ryou _couldn't_ have done it. It had to be me. _Had_ to be. I said I'd kill the person who did this to me – to Ryou – but what am I supposed to do? I didn't even know what I was doing. I still don't know. It's like swearing I'll kill the first person to touch Ryou but then it's me... _

_He's mine...he's always been mine...but what do I do when I want even more? I don't want a mockery of him, I don't want what he'd be if we were one person all the time, I want the other half of myself. I want..._

He was distracted from these thoughts of self-loathing by the sound of sandals on the floor.

Bakura promptly rolled over, sat up, and scooted back a few feet, arranging a disdainful sneer on his face as he did so.

He stopped mid-scramble as he got a good look at the person standing there.

Shadi.

Holding up the Millennium Scales.

_Oh shit!_

Bakura promptly did what any tomb robber who wanted to live beyond the next five minutes would do. He looked around for the nearest exit. Finding none, he dove for cover under the desk and snatched up his deck, flicking through the cards with the speed borne of fear for one's life.

Clink.

The Scales had been set down in front of him. Bakura's eyes widened as he put the card he wanted between his teeth, shoved away the deck, and yanked out his knife, pressing back against the wall. _Seshat, lady, don't kill me, Ma'at, don't kill me, Ma'at, don't kill me, Seshat, you like me, don't you? Set, do _you_ like me? Ma'at, don't kill me... _He took the card in his right hand and brandished the knife with his left as Shadi knelt down in front of him.

"If you don't want Doma the Angel of Silence nicking off your head, you'll back up and take those Scales with you!" Bakura snarled.

Shadi merely raised his eyebrows and picked up the Millennium Ankh from around his neck instead.

Bakura barely had time to think _Oh shit!_ again before there was a resounding click and he lost contact with the outside world.

[-]

Yami was pacing in front of the door to the stairs wordlessly. Three pairs of eyes were on him as he did so.

He finally looked up. "Will you stop that staring?!"

"Sorry, man," Jounouchi apologized. "We just don't have much else to do. I mean, Bakura goes crackers, we go racing up here, then some dude in a turban goes running down there with these freaky metal things banging into the walls. So until we can go check out what's going on down there, you're it as far as entertainment goes."

"Shadi was a fool to go down there," Aset said as Yami growled softly and resumed pacing. "He always forgets that he's probably the least welcome of all the Item holders. The thief's probably still panicked, and if he does _anything_ with his magic, he could send us all straight to hell what with the unbalance that's been created. Has he been doing any magic lately?"

"Not that I've seen, but his hikari has," Yami said.

Isis slumped against one of the decay cases. "The power he'd discovered is addictive. It's not meant for us, but we can't get away. The darkness wants us just as much as we want it, and it just gets worse and worse..."

Aset looked over at Isis, then reached over and pulled her unresisting hikari in for a hug. "It'll be all right," she said softly. "It's not your fault."

"What's wrong?" Jounouchi asked.

Isis twisted to look at them. "It happened to us. Right after I got my Item back from you, my pharaoh," she said quietly. "That's why we're moving fast. We delayed it too long last time, and I...nearly died."

"Oooh," Jounouchi said. "Not good."

"No," Isis replied. "Not one bit." She tugged free from Aset's grasp, turned around fully, and leaned back into her yami. "But I think Shadi will be able to help you. He saved our lives. I'll wager the Tauk that he can pull it off again."

"Oi!" Aset complained.

"Aset? Do you only hear every other word? It's a bet I'm guaranteed to _win,_ you tit."

"...oh." Aset thought about this for a minute.

"I'm your hikari. I don't make bets without knowing how they're going to come out," Isis retorted.

"Mmm. Point," Aset agreed. "Well, Shadi's certainly taking his sweet time. Didn't even kiss _me_ hello."

"Er. Aset, _I'm_ his girlfriend," Isis reminded her gently.

"Yes, well, you're my girlfriend too, so I suppose we're all connected. I wonder if this now automatically makes us hooking up with Kaisei and Eisei?" Aset mused.

"Hurrah for harems," Isis announced.

Jounouchi and Yami no Yuugi stared. Finally Jounouchi managed to say, "Can I get in on this Millennium Wossname thing? It sounds like a _lot_ of fun."

Yami bit back a snicker as memories of the last night came rushing into focus. "Indeed it is. Isis, you wouldn't happen to have an exhibit for Hathor, would you?"

Isis raised her eyebrows. "Indeed. She's not your patroness, is she?"

"Now she is," Yami said fervently.

"Well, you can run that by her emissary. He'll be by sometime," Isis said with a sigh. "Exhibit fifteen. Down that way, hook a right. When do you need more Motrin?"

Yami squeaked royally and scuttled from the group.

"Eisei's here?" Aset inquired.

"Has to be. Shadi was wearing the Ankh," Isis replied.

"You think he's done yet?" Jounouchi asked, poking at the door. "This is getting boring."

"Mmm," Aset agreed. "Let's go have wild monkey sex in the fifteenth exhibit," she suggested.

"Um. Yami's there," Jounouchi reminded them before Aset and Isis could do more about this suggestion than start snogging. The two girls both paused, blinked at each other, then sighed and returned to their former positions. Jounouchi threw his hands up. "Hey, hey, not to dissuade you from the free love thing."

"Free love?" Yami asked, returning.

"Look! Exhibit fifteen's empty!" Aset exclaimed, poking Isis.

"Shadi's not back?" Yami inquired.

"No, he's here. He's just invisible," Jounouchi said sarcastically. "He _is_ bloody taking forever."

"He's probably tormenting the hell out of that thief," Aset mused.

"I just hope he doesn't blow the place up doing it," Isis said coolly. "I _just_ cleaned up this morning. Malik saw fit to – oh, never mind." After remembering that Yami was in the crowd she was addressing, Isis cut herself off.

"I don't think I want to know," Yami said, turning almost in front of her nose and starting to pace away.

Aset took one arm away from Isis's waist and grabbed his shoulder. "What the hell is that?"

Yami peered over his shoulder and down at her grandly. "What's what?"

Aset rose to her feet. "Hold still." She reached under the collar of his shirt, startling a yelp out of him.

"Watch the hands, priestess!"

"If I was going to flirt with anyone, it'd be with the girl squished between us," Aset replied waspishly. "You should know that, you had my Tauk for a while." Isis turned a funny shade of pinkish-green. "Oh, don't be such wimps, the pair of you. Ah! Got it," she added, fishing out her prize and patting Yami's shoulder. She eyed the object in her palm critically. "I don't know how you missed having this thing shoved down your shirt. Must've been all those buckles. How did you come across this? I don't believe it was given to you," Aset added, holding out the Millennium Eye with a closed expression.

Yami's eyes widened. "That's the Millennium Eye!" he exclaimed.

Jounouchi skittered back away from the sphere. "That thing gives me the creeps!"

Yami glowered at the Eye. "That thing keeps popping up in the most random places."

Aset raised her eyes. "So you don't know how it got there? I did think it was rather an odd place to keep it, but..."

Yami looked indignant. "Of course I don't know how it got there." He took the Eye and examined it from several lights. "What on Earth is it doing here?"

Isis slid out from between the two yamis. "My pharaoh, if you'll allow me..." She held out her hand for the Eye.

"Here, but what are you going to do?" Yami asked.

Isis smiled without much humor in the expression. "See if I can find who took it. The Tauk sees the future, but maybe the future is revealing. Yami?" She turned to the gold-robed girl and held out the Eye.

"Right-oh," Aset said. She touched the Eye as well, then both shut their eyes as the Tauk began to glow.

_ripping it out of –_

_if i stuff it down his shirt i can – _

_blood lick it off – _

_should i cut out an eye to – _

_should i risk it – _

_i don't want to fight another yami – _

_you're holding that – _

_that's MINE!_

The two both opened their eyes simultaneously and dropped the golden sphere.

/Should we tell the pharaoh?/ Isis asked.

Aset smiled. Let's not. We can deal with the thief on our own. For all we know, the Eye may yet accept him. The yami in it lies dormant, as do the powers.

/Fine by me./

"Well?" Yami asked.

The two girls looked at each other, then Isis bent and picked up the Eye, tossing and catching it languidly. "If the future's to be trusted, it won't be long until you have an answer."

[-]

Shadi was standing in a corridor with two doors.

_There are two souls in this body as well,_ he noted. _There seems to be quite a few of these people in this town. At least now I know I got the right one._

He looked back and forth between the doors, and finally settled for going right.

He turned the knob and pushed the door open gently –

– and jerked back as a pale hand curled around the edge of the door and pulled it back.

Shadi carefully surveyed the occupant, masking his confusion as he did so.

The boy was slender and delicately boned, with a definite feminine beauty. Pale hair hung down around his shoulders and large dark eyes met his squarely. The boy was wearing dark blue jeans and a loose green shirt over a tighter gray one. A golden ring hung with five feathery points and with a pyramid strung in the center was dangling from a leather cord around his neck. Barefoot, he was about a head shorter than Shadi himself.

His mouth curled into an almost predatory smile, seductive in its heralding of danger. The boy looked up at him lazily through dark lashes and stood away from the door, murmuring, "Please come in...Shadi..."

Shadi warily stepped through the door, eyes flickering around for traps of any kind.

"There's no danger to you, except from me directly," the boy breathed, giggling slightly. "I can never have too many suitors, you know..."

Shadi ignored the boy's unsettling comment and looked around.

The room was shadowy but not dark, with splashes of luminous silver and white giving a light, airy touch. The corners were cluttered with photographs in frames, broken bookshelves spilling their contents to the floor, and the occasional knife or other deadly weapon. There was a stereo system lining one wall with the cords spread haphazardly over the floor and CDs stacked next to it. In the final corner was a pile of sheets and other soft things, all a shade of reddish-black that emulated blood.

The boy had wandered over to this nest and flopped back on it, arms behind his head, watching Shadi through half-lidded eyes. "Care to join me?" he inquired softly.

The words were silkily hypnotizing, making Shadi consider stepping towards the boy. He broke away from the silver-haired boy's gaze and looked around the room once more, noting even more than ever that there were torture tools scattered throughout the area. There was no sign of innocence here, only lust and hunger and madness.

_I must have found the yami's room... _

He sighed and turned to leave –

– and found the door gone.

He whirled back to the boy, who rolled over slightly and lounged back into the sheets sensuously. It gave the illusion that he was drowning in blood.

"Let me out," Shadi commanded.

The boy sighed. "Won't you reconsider? I get..." He turned his head to look at Shadi again, the smile making his face demonic. "...so lonely."

Shadi curtly turned away. "Free me, little one."

The boy jumped out of the bed and sashayed over to him, sliding an arm around his waist and drawing him to the wall where the door once was. "Do come back and visit," the boy said, sketching a semblance of a door with his free hand and pushing it open.

Shadi tore himself violently from the boy's clutches and shot out the door.

_Now to look at the hikari..._

He turned back for one last disgusted, horrified look, almost reflexively.

The boy smiled and waved. "Just so you know..." he added. "I'm Ryou, _hikari_ no Bakura."

For a second, all was silent.

"By Ra..." Shadi finally breathed. _I thought Isis had been crazy...this one's totally warped!_

Ryou giggled and closed the door. "Bye-bye now."

Shadi's eyes widened and he spun away again, feeling ill. He swallowed hard, then began pushing at the other door, his thoughts whirling. _If that's the hikari, then what's the yami become? _His pushing intensified into pounding, then full-body shoves. _Why won't it open?_ he wondered, backing up for another run at the door.

The sound of locks clicking back didn't deter his steps until he was about two inches from the door, at which point his momentum took over.

_Oh bugger._

Shadi crashed through the now-easily-opened door and landed with his nose a few inches from a pair of bare feet.

The toenails were sharpened.

"So now you're at my mercy, eh?" a voice from about five and a half feet upward said mockingly.

Shadi rolled to his feet and dusted himself off grandly as the voice continued. "So what took you so long to get in here? You didn't start hammering at the door for a while. You stop in to see Ryou?"

Shadi finally looked at the boy addressing him.

The basic physical shape was the same as the other one. Slender, pale, about a head shorter than he was, and tousled silver hair. The eyes were also large and long-lashed, but slanted and reddish. The teeth were sharp and bared in a silent snarl. The boy's fingernails were also pared into points. He had several taped-up injuries, some of them half-hidden under torn jeans and a somewhat lacerated black shirt, over which also hung a Millennium Ring.

"What are you doing here?" the boy snapped.

"I came because of what has happened to your hikari," Shadi said.

The boy stiffened. "You stay _away_ from my hikari." The order was almost a growl.

"He likes to attach himself bodily to people, but I'll try my best," Shadi said lightly.

He was completely unprepared for being tackled by this small, dainty-looking boy, despite the toughness he'd exuded.

"You don't _touch_ my hikari. No one's going to take him away from me again! _No one!_" the boy screamed into his face, eyes blazing red.

Shadi blinked. "As you wish, little one."

The boy stood up in one jerky motion, glowering down at him. "Tell me what you're doing here and then get out."

"I wished to go to the root of the problem," Shadi said. "I've dealt with something similar already, but the circumstances were very different. I wanted to meet you each on your own terms." He slowly sat up, tilting his head back to meet the boy's eyes.

The boy backed up a pace, still watching him warily as Shadi climbed to his feet. "What'd you bring the Scales for?"

_So you're afraid of these Scales, little one. No worthy person should be, but you are anyway,_ Shadi noted. _What have you done that is so worthy of this fear?_ Almost unconsciously, he looked around.

Heaps of what looked like the most valuable items from tombs were stacked by the walls, some in rough sacks. A nest of blankets not unlike the one in Ryou's room was in a narrow recess set in the far wall. One or two torches burned, dumping smoke into the air and giving the room a murky air.

Shadi swiveled to his left, seeing metal glint in the mediocre light, and beheld a huge rack of knives, swords, crossbows, whips, chains, machine guns, and pretty much any other kind of weapon invented that could kill effectively. They were all immaculately cleaned and cared for. He craned his head to the left and saw a plethora of locks on the door.

"If you're so curious, there's traps too," the boy said. "I'm a tomb robber. I know how to set good traps. And how to avoid them."

"You're the tomb robber," Shadi repeated. "This explains your fear of me." _And Isis totally neglected to tell me that, too. Bugger._

"Damn straight I am," the boy replied coldly. "You'd have found out anyhow, so you might as well know while you're at my mercy. I'm surprised you didn't know already."

"I'm Bakura, the other half of him," he snapped, pointing at the door and, Shadi assumed, to the room on the other side of the hallway beyond it. "Yami no Bakura. And according to all of those idiots out there, I'm insane." Bakura laughed raggedly, the sound completely unlike Ryou's breathy, inhuman giggle. "So you'll want to get out now."

"I think that despite your transgressions, I want to help you," Shadi said thoughtfully. /Right?/

Bugger that! Weigh his heart now, and the hikari will go back to normal with him gone,the yami in the Scales, Kaisei, piped up. Being Ma'at's emissary tended to make him Scales-happy.

Why don't you make him a puppet? He's not bad looking, and no one will miss him like they did that girl, the yami in the Ankh retorted. Eisei, of course. Being Hathor's own tool gave him an eye for cute people.

Judge him!

Turn him into a puppet!

Go on, judge him! You know you want to!

But puppets are more fun!

Ammit and Anubis would be happy, not to mention Ma'at.

You're a priest of Ma'at! Don't make our hikari do your work for you. Make Ma'at happy yourself. Turn the tomb robber into a puppet!

/Oh, shut up, the pair of you. I said I was going to help him, not kill him. Were either of you listening to what Isis told me?/ Shadi asked crankily.

No,Kaisei said cheerfully. What's up?

/Remember what happened once? It's earlier on than it was for her, but it's still happening./

There was a resounding and somewhat shocked silence inside his head. /The Ankh's getting plenty of use right now and we do not need a tomb robber as a sex toy, pretty though he may be. I'm not weighing this one's heart and risking killing the hikari needlessly, either. Are we clear?/

...

...

/Good./

"Having yami trouble?" Bakura asked mockingly. "We're not a nice group, you know."

_Do I ever,_ Shadi thought. "I thank you for meeting me."

"Does this mean you're getting out of my mind?"

"Yes."

"Good. Out," Bakura snapped.

Shadi inclined his head again and drew on the power of the Ankh once more.

Can we _please_ –

/_No_! Dammit, Eisei!/

All _right_...

Shadi blinked, trying to orient himself, as did the boy crouched under the desk in front of him. Shadi picked up the Scales and backed away before Bakura remembered that he was holding Doma the Angel of Silence and a knife. He was halfway up the stairs when there was a loud thump from under the desk as Bakura tried to stand up and hit the underside squarely. Shadi schooled his features to blankness as Bakura cursed loudly and extensively, and then continued on upward.

He emerged in a room filled with Egyptian exhibits. He recognized the pharaoh, Isis Ishtar, and her yami, but the fourth boy – a blonde – was unknown to him.

"Are you Shadi?" the blonde asked. "Isis's been talking about you. We all have, actually. General consensus is that you're an idiot, but not a bad boyfriend. I'm Jounouchi, by the way. Where's Bakura?"

"Here." The tomb robber elbowed past Shadi and stalked into the room, discreetly holding his head. The blonde Jounouchi looked at Bakura sharply. "What'd you do this time? Concussion?"

"I don't know," Bakura snapped.

Jounouchi sighed and pointed to a table. "Sit still."

Shadi watched in amazement as Bakura looked slightly cowed and complied. However, when the blonde boy turned his gaze to him, he saw it to be one that would have made the most hardened criminal back down. "Anything wrong with you?"

"No," Shadi said. _Good lord. Eyes of steel._

The expression died a quick and painless death. "Cool. So, you got ideas for us?"

"I don't know much," Shadi confessed. "I acted on instinct last time."

Jounouchi shrugged. "Well, that's just peachy. We can all talk about what we know and then do something about it. Sound good?"

"I want to know who – " the pharaoh began petulantly.

Isis shot him a blank but speaking look. "Not now, my pharaoh."

Aset sighed and rearranged herself on the table. "Well, Shadi, you probably went tearing down there to go poke through that kid's head, so what'd you find?"

* * *

Fluffy: Er. This chapter was much shorter originally. Don't know how it got so long. Buh?

**Gyakutenno Megami:** heart eyes 

**Kitten: **Here's the next installment, dunno about the rest.

**Luke and Kaial Skywolf**: Thanks, because Bakura won't say anything nice anytime soon.

**Sailor Comet:** Hurrah for shoujo ai.

**Melissa:** waves Nice to see you again!

**yukoma: **I like writing cliffhangers. They're fun.

**Little Brat Yami Bakura:** Sorry this took so long. Carpal tunnel's a wrist thingie. It's painful on and off. Today's an 'off' day. Thanks for the cookie pokes Bakura

**Dawn: **Yepyep there's more. Maybe five chapters at least.

**Milk: **Sorry about not following through on the 'soon' bit, but it's more! And Malik may waltz in for a bit next chapter.

**firedraygon97: **Oh yes, he's messed up. And lovin' every minute.

**a very angry person: **Oo Rabid people! Meeeeeeeeep! goes running off into the sunset

**Chaos Chibi Mage**: Fweeheehee! Plushie goodness!

**Funeral-Angel: **Thank you! Here's some more ficcage.

**Sky-Pirate-Tat**: Interesting, eh? Hmmm...

**Saturn Imp: **Madness and insanity just happened! Bwahahaha

**Celtic Guardian Princess:** Wow! Cookies and pixi stix! Whips and straightjackets! First aid kit of DOOOOOOOOM! Playthings! Haircare products! faints

**Cherry: **Yami powah!

**higashikaze: **Really? Wowness! Here's the next chapter!

**S. A. Bonasi: **confidential whisper Fate's aversive to affection, so I write all the shounen ai. Glad you like! And power to the evilness!

**The Future Ruler of the Cosmos:** Nifteh.

**Alyssa-Anime-Angel: **Look! Bakura pity!

**FukaiMori: **Uh...I hope you haven't died reading this...that's not a good thing...that's a very bad thing...would you like a frying pan?

Duel: See? You lot are good at this. Keep it up.


	11. In Which Malik Is Traumatized For Life

Fate: Hmm, how much more? Even I don't know!

Disclaimer: Lawyers? Where?

* * *

**[10] In Which Malik Is Traumatized For Life**

Ryou Bakura, duelist, Monster World competitor, decent student, and completely psychotic hikari, was pacing irritably around the basement of the museum. He'd only emerged after his yami and Shadi had gone upstairs.

_Damn him...damn them all! They're trying to keep me from my yami! He's mine! Mineminemine...he's all mine, and they'll never keep us apart. Nevernevernever._

Ryou picked up a stray bit of pipe from the floor and flung it against the wall furiously as a final touch. He then sat down against the wall with an audible thump, pouting and stroking the knife in his left hand across his lips.

_I want to taunt him, to tease him, to draw him out and make him scream, trade pain for pleasure and pleasure for pain until he's broken in my arms, boneless and bonded to me forever and beyond..._

Ryou sighed dreamily, turning the knife blade to briefly graze his lips before sliding it back into a pocket. Warm blood trickled down his chin and onto his gray shirt. He absently licked at it, then went back to his musing.

_I'm in lust._

_Yes._

_I want to feel him scream beneath me, have him writhe and_ _bleed in my hands, want him want him he's MINE!_

Sigh.

Ryou glowered fruitlessly at the staircase. The closer he came to Bakura, the more dangerous he felt himself grow. With every thwarting, with every failed conquest, his mind felt more warped and tangled, until he was reaching for anything and everything that came near.

_Yami...Yuugi...Jounouchi...Isis...Shadi...all my playthings, to use and break, discard and throw away into the Shadow Realm...toys, every one of them..._ Ryou giggled, listening to his breathy, sinful laughter dispassionately, then smiling at the subtle invitation he heard. Gone was the innocence in his sweet, charming manner.

He was still sweet, in a distorted, cloying manner. He was still charming, as a murderer charms his victims. The ability to seduce with a touch, a look, a smile, was burning in his blood, burning to be used, burning to draw one more person into his circle of lust and death.

_Ring magic...an ever-expanding cycle of death, lust and hatred, madness all twisted and coiled and ready to spring, all boiling in me..._

_Yami took it for granted...and I took it all..._

_And oh Ra, but I love it oh so much..._

Ryou smiled even more widely, malice and mocking curving his bloodstained lips without him thinking about it.

He was still sitting like this when the back door opened.

A boy with long, sandy hair bounced into the basement. He was about Ryou's height and build, with darker skin and lighter eyes. What wasn't so obvious was his psychotic darker half, his tendency to try and mind-control random people and take their wallets, or the fact that his name was Malik.

_Well, well, well... _Ryou thought with a growing smile of delight. _Someone certainly looks lovely tonight._

"I'm ba-ack!" Malik singsonged, continuing towards the now vacated desk with nary a look left or right. "Isis-oneesan?" he queried when he reached the abandoned workstation. "Er. This isn't good. Maybe she's upstairs!"

With this innovative thought, Malik whirled around.

And came face-to-face with Ryou.

"Meh? MEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!" Malik jumped about six feet straight into the air, flailed his arms, and managed to do several back somersaults over the desk and into the wall before sitting up and blinking dazedly.

Ryou smiled slowly and waved.

"Ryou? Geb's bones, don't _scare_ me like that!" Malik yelped. "What're you doing down here all alone?"

Ryou giggled softly. _He looks...so good, _he thought. "They left me," he whispered mockingly. "All alone," he continued on a sigh.

"Huh? Who?" Malik blinked.

"I suppose I scared them," Ryou added dreamily. _He's confused...so confused...and a little nervous...but I see desire there..._

Ryou slid bonelessly over the desk and slithered into a sitting position in front of Malik. "I'm ever so changed, you know," he softly confided, ending in a muted but wild laugh. _It's so funny...so easy...so me._

"You are?" Malik asked, being completely unaware of what had happened in the last twenty-four hours or so.

"Mmm. Very," Ryou replied, leaning slightly closer as the Ring around his neck began glimmering slightly. He slid a hand into his pocket and pulled out his knife, then began passing it along his lips once more.

Malik gazed cross-eyed at the moving knife. "Isn't that – ?"

"My delectable yami's? Oh, quite...but he was absolutely in pieces when I left him, and didn't really mind so very much..."

"Er," Malik said intelligently. "Doesn't that hurt?" he inquired as Ryou put another slash across his own lips.

"Wonderfully so," Ryou breathed. "I love sensation – any sensation – don't you?"

"Sensation's good," Malik agreed in the tone of one humoring a lunatic. He was quite good at that, being as he had one living in his mind.

"Do you think you'll like this sensation?" Ryou asked, winding his hands in Malik's shirt.

"What sensa – WAH!" Malik found himself being jerked forwards violently and being kissed rather thoroughly by Ryou.

Which, all things considered, wasn't too bad.

If you discount the teeth, the blood, the psychosis, and the fact that his yami tended to be on the possessive side.

Ryou pulled away slightly and smiled slowly.

Malik jerked back, both hands clapped over his now-bloody mouth, making horrified squeaking noises. "Hathor protect me..." he gasped when he finally removed his hands, industriously scrubbing the blood off onto his black pants.

Ryou merely pulled him closer again with a hand over his captive's mouth. "You're the closest to yami...and the least resistant. I wonder...is there something there that draws me to you? Your weakness, perhaps?"

Malik struggled wildly as Ryou murmured cloyingly sweet nothings in his ear and kissed his hair. He finally tore himself free, and, screaming like a banshee for his sister and his yami, bolted.

Ryou lay back on the ground, looking at the blond strands of hair caught in his vermilion-stained fingers and giggling through bloody lips.

**[somewhat earlier]**

"Well, Shadi, you probably went tearing down there to go poke through that kid's head, so what'd you find?" Aset inquired.

Shadi sighed. "Aset, I did not go 'tearing down there to go poke through that kid's head'. I came in, said hello, and _then_ went to go investigate. Priorities, you see."

Aset shrugged. "Same difference. So, let's hear it. What'd you find?"

Shadi sighed. "I saw – "

"Hey, hey, wait a minute!" Bakura snapped, sliding off of his place of repose and to his feet. "You are not going to tell everyone here what is in my mind! That's my _personal_ mind, you got that?"

Shadi continued as though he had not heard. " – a lot of weapons, a few books, lots of dark red and black, and plenty of seduction."

"We can see that by looking at him," Yami said, sounding bored. Bakura made a strangled growling noise and whipped out his Sharp Pointy Butcher Knife of Doomation. Unfortunately, Yami wasn't watching, so the full effect was lost.

"This was in the hikari's soul room," Shadi interrupted hastily. "The thief's soul room was covered in dust, as though he was unable to do any of the things that characterized him."

The tableau froze.

Bakura glowered at him and spat, "I told you to stay away from my hikari." This effectively broke the silence.

"Your hikari is hitting on everything that moves," Yami said in tones of immense disgust. "There's no point in you reiterating yourself."

Bakura's fury brought an inhuman speed to his pulling Yami's head back and pressing the knife to his exposed throat. "One more word about my hikari and I'm going to need to clean this knife up again."

"If you kill him, kill him in the basement. It's hell getting blood out of the rug," Isis said absently. "If my little brother and his yami can manage it, so can you." She then blinked and looked up. "Oh, _shit_. My pharaoh, you shouldn't have heard that."

"If he's dead, it won't matter," Jounouchi said with a noticeable lack of tact.

Shadi quietly walked up behind Bakura and lifted the knife away from Yami's throat. "Please."

Bakura whirled around, knife clutched in front of him, staring around wildly with smoldering red eyes. "What do you know? What the hell do _any_ of you know? I did this! It was all me! I did this and I as much as killed him and I can't fix it and I don't know what to do and all I hear from you is condescension and plans to rescue my hikari and take him away from me! Even if you could get him back, you'd take him away because you hate me! You don't understand! No one understands! He's _mine_!"

Jounouchi made a curious squeaky noise and tried to hide under a table. Bakura turned to him, the fire in his eyes dying into confusion. "I don't understand you," Bakura said simply, slowly sinking to the ground. "I don't understand anyone."

When faced with a greatly distraught, nervy, and armed tomb robber, one has two options. The first is to run screaming and not stop until one is about fifty miles away.

The second is the one Shadi used.

/Er. Eisei?/

At your service! the spirit of the Ankh said cheerfully, peering out at the world through Shadi's eyes and turning them briefly purplish-red. Oooh, doesn't he look cute in the real world!

/Er. Yes. Don't make him a sex toy, but.../

Really?

/Yes./

Eisei immediately appeared next to Shadi in a tussle of curly dark red hair, freckles, and red eyes. The Ankh spirit stood roughly six foot two in boots with a build similar to Shadi's, and was wearing a pair of rather tight jeans and a leather vest, being much more entertained by modern clothing than his hikari.

He slowly surveyed Bakura, then gave vent to a wolf whistle before stalking over, deftly picking up the tomb robber, and putting the knife on a table out of reach. He then twirled in place, letting his shoulder-length copper curls flare out, all the while squealing like a fangirl over Bakura.

Everyone sweatdropped with rather large, round eyes.

"What...?" Yami finally managed to squeak out.

"Eisei," Shadi explained. "The spirit of the Millennium Ankh. His twin brother is in the Scales. Eisei is...easily enamored of pretty things. Rather like your silver-haired acquaintance there, only Eisei's pretty things tend to be in human form."

"Do me a favor and keep him on the other side of the room from me at all times, will you?" Yami requested.

"I can but try." Shadi sighed deeply.

It was on this note that Marik walked into the room and stopped dead in the door, a lit cigarette resting forgotten in his mouth.

"What the hell is going on here?!" This statement was punctuated by a steady flow of smoke from between the startled yami's lips.

"Meep," Jounouchi said, and retreated even further under the table.

Isis got up, stormed over to Marik, neatly plucked the cigarette out of his mouth, and pitched it out the nearest window. "Smoking is fine and dandy, since you're already dead, but if you get my brother sick or me fired, you're going to wish that Father never found the Millennium Items, you stupid fuck," Isis hissed.

"Aw shit," Marik replied. "You mean I can't smoke in here?"

Isis promptly grabbed the Millennium Rod from his pocket and hit him upside the head. Hard. "No, and if you _ever_ ask me that again, you're going to be _eating_ that Millennium Rod sharp end first," she said, tucking the Item back into Marik's pocket.

Aset remarked as an aside to the rest of the room, "They do this all the time. It's been a bit of a truce since he started shagging her brother."

Jounouchi looked relieved to have a distraction. "Uh-huh."

Marik sighed. "What is this freak show, anyway? Bloody hell, you're back?" he demanded of Shadi. "Oh, Am'mit eat me, it's _you_," he added, glancing contemptuously at Eisei. "Isis-onee, when are you ever going to break up with those three idiots?"

"Shut up, _otouto,_" Isis shot back.

"Wow," Jounouchi said reverently as Marik digested this information.

"What?" Isis asked.

"You're still alive after all that," Jounouchi said, admiration shining in his eyes. "Wow."

"I know Marik is oh so very riveting, but could someone PLEASE GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS PREDICAMENT?" Bakura screeched from across the room.

"Stay there until someone gets a camera!" Jounouchi suggested.

"Eisei, _please_," Shadi said.

He could see Eisei pouting, but the spastic Egyptian finally put Bakura down and wandered over to him after making a tour of the room and glomping everyone enthusiastically.

Shadi sighed and looked at the assembled group, all of whom were suffering various shades of being disturbed, from Aset's complete and utter ignoring of Eisei to Jounouchi's limb-flailing hysterics. "Eisei, you are officially dangerous."

Eisei grinned sunnily. "I'm a yami. Of course I am." He was playing with Bakura's butcher knife, Shadi noticed.

"Ahem. Put that down," Shadi instructed.

"But I _like_ – "

"Eisei. Knife. _Down_."

"...fine." Eisei sulkily placed the knife on top of a display case.

"Thank you. Now, I'm going to need your opinion as a yami and a healer, so please try and be a little less...enthusiastic," Shadi suggested. /Kaisei?/ he said inwardly, getting the yami of the Scales's attention.

Yeah, what?

/Do you mind terribly keeping an eye on your brother?/

You're better at it than me,Kaisei replied, and materialized. As Eisei's fraternal twin, he shared the height and build of his brother, but had curling black hair and reddish-orange eyes instead.

"How many people are going to be in this room, anyway?" Aset asked.

"As many as this conference needs," Shadi said gravely.

"I'm glad I left Yuugi home," Yami muttered.

Isis began counting people as Jounouchi crawled out from under the table and stood up. "Jounouchi, Pharaoh Yami – you say your hikari will not be here?"

Yami nodded.

"Good," Isis said frankly. "This place can't hold many more. Bakura, Shadi, Eisei, Kaisei, yami, me, Marik, and – " Isis stopped and blinked. "Marik."

"What? Haven't we established that I'm here?"

"What are you doing here if my brother isn't?" Isis asked slowly.

Marik tilted his head slightly, then looked around. "Wait a minute, where's my hikari?"

"That's what we're wondering," Aset said patiently.

"No, he was going to go through the basement to look for you, and he told me to come up here and wait and not break anything," Marik said to Isis.

Bakura's eyes widened a great deal. "Bastet protect him," he breathed involuntarily.

"What?" Aset asked. "You leave something down there?"

Bakura cut her off. "Yes. Ryou."

Aset's eyes widened. "Shadi, you didn't see him, did you?"

Shadi blinked. "Not in the physical world."

"He's there," Bakura said, starting for the door. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

A bloodcurdling scream promptly split the air, followed by the sound of scrabbling feet. The door to the cellar banged open, nearly missing Bakura. A screaming and bloodstained Malik tore into the room, knocked his yami down, clung to him, and began sobbing hysterically.

* * *

Fluffy: grooves

**firedraygon97:** He was temporarily dragged in. ;;

**KeMu:** Eisei wants sessy bishies.

**Flame: **Erk. Typo evils. But THANK YOU!

**yukoma: **Be confused. Be very confused...

**S.A. Bonasi: **I've never found that it makes sense that only the Puzzle and Ring should have spirits, so I...er...work around it. And have fun with it. The Puzzle's having two is Bakura living in there for a while after Battle City, methinks, but I could be wrong. Andandand...good luck with the dare!

**Alyssa-Anime-Angel: **Shadi's not that much older than everyone else, actually. Seen him in the anime lately?

**Nadako-Miaka: **Having your own hikari isn't all it's cracked up to be.

**Chibi Chaos Mage: **Ehehe...go look up S. A. Bonasi's fic 'Yama Nashi, Ochi Nashi, Imi Nashi'.

**Rose Fox: **Thanks. Will do!

**Sky-Pirate-Tat: **tries to hide the rope for lassoing readers

**RYO'S ANGEL: **Oo Caps lock?

**Melissa: **drags in a kicking, screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth interior decorator Here you go! And is this cliffie better? Evil evil last one...

**Saturn Imp: **Fear the scariness.

**Kitten:** Me? Discontinue _this_ story?

**Falcona, Luke, Kaial Skywolf: **Yes, I was possessed when I wrote that. Or I really hope I was. Eeesh.

**Bara Kitsune: **Don't worry, the end isn't terribly near.

**Wolfqueen821: **Okay. Right. OO

**summer psycho-- **The White Ferret? Draco Malfoy? Well, think about it...he works on the black market with a girl who's trying to destroy the world.

**Dark Millenia: **That was supposed to be this chapter. But it's going to be next chapter now. u

**Epiphany Under Moonlight: **I like that title too.

**Froz Flame: **I'm undead. You can't kill me. Really.

**vanishingact: **Glad you think so.

**Gyakutenno Megami: **Welcome back!

Duel: Why do I even stand here, looking pathetic, telling you to review? I have no purpose. Sigh.


	12. In Which Yami No Malik Is Angry

Fate: DooDoot. Two more chapters? Three?

Disclaimer: La la la la la la – what?

* * *

**[11] In Which Yami no Malik Is Angry**

Marik spoke first out of the deathly silence that followed. "Who the _fuck_ did this?" he inquired, almost sanely. Unfortunately, Marik has never been good at the sounding sane bit.

"Ryou," Malik gasped, hiccuping. "Oh my Ra I don't know what's wrong with him but he's gone mad and he tried to kiss me and I'm going all insane and I'm falling and I can't see and I think I'm going to die and I don't know what to do and where am I and who are you and _someone help me_!" The last three words were screamed into Marik's shoulder and punctuated by more hysterical sobbing. "I can't see..." he whispered after a few more seconds of shocked silence.

"At least he can talk," Bakura snarled, shoving away from the wall and stalking towards the basement door.

And walked straight into Kaisei.

"Hey! Bugger off!" Bakura said, trying to get around him and failing. "I need to go have a bit of a chat with my hikari, and you're in my way!"

"Why should I?" Kaisei asked quietly.

"Because!" Bakura snarled. "What'll you do to stop me?"

Kaisei sighed impatiently and dangled the Scales in front of Bakura's nose. "Does this convince you? Am'mit will come if I summon her, and you would be in her belly if not for my word. Do you wish me to revoke that? I'm sure that it would stop you."

"Shit shit _shit_!" Bakura yelped, jumping backwards, skidding under a table, colliding with Jounouchi's ankles, and knocking him over. "Don't!" he added as he scrambled behind Jounouchi for extra protection.

"Kaisei, that was pretty damn cruel," Shadi said appreciatively.

"I know whatever is happening is absolutely wonderful but would someone mind telling me what just happened to me?" Malik asked thickly, managing to sit up and lean against the wall whilst he scrubbed at his bloody face with one hand. "What the hell was he playing at, and why do I feel so sick?"

Jounouchi immediately went over to Malik, nearly stepping on Marik as he too sat up from his involuntary repose on the floor. "Open," he ordered, prying the boy's jaws apart and squinting down into his throat. "Damn. This is easier with a penlight. Move," he added to Marik, so immersed in his new patient's problems that homicidal yamis no longer scared him. "I'd guess that you swallowed a good amount of blood, considering the condition of your teeth and throat. That sort of thing induces nausea, you know," he added, sitting back on his heels. "Whose blood? Yours?" he inquired, looking further into Malik's mouth. "Don't answer or you'll bite me," he admonished.

"Then why did you ask him, toy-thing?" Marik demanded.

Jounouchi shrugged. "Because I felt like it. You're still bleeding," he said to Malik. "Mother of God, he bit you," he said astutely, letting Malik close his mouth. "Try not to swallow any more blood if you can help it. You need to rinse your mouth out and spit out the blood, and get some liquid in you. Do you feel at all dizzy?"

"It's not all mine," Malik answered a previous question instead. "Ryou was bleeding too."

"Did you hurt him?" Bakura screeched from across the room.

"He cut himself," Malik shot back. "And I feel like death warmed over," he announced to the world at large.

"Okay. Lie back and shut up," Jounouchi said calmly, then stood up and paced back into the center of the room, right in front of Bakura. Everyone else had fallen back into side conversations. "Hello?" Jounouchi said, without much response. "Hello?!"

More ignoring of the only non-Item-connected person.

"WILL YOU ALL SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME?!"

Much less ignoring of the only non-Item-connected person.

"I know I'm the only normal person here and that all of you could have me eaten or killed or mind-erased without too much effort, but come on. I'm the one who found Ryou in the first place, I admittedly got Ryou started on this campaign – much though I did not mean it," Jounouchi added hastily, looking quickly at a furious Bakura. "And then I went for help from all of you. Well, okay, I kept tripping over Bakura and he seems to be just tagging along, but frankly, this meeting was _my_ idea and I think that I want to be in charge if at all possible," he said meditatively. "Besides, I'm the only impartial party. I haven't got a Millennium thingie."

"You mean you started this?!" Bakura demanded.

"I told Ryou to go do something drastic to you to see if you'd stop knocking him around," Jounouchi said waspishly. "And before you try and kill me, remember that I'm all that's standing between you and certain death. Literally," he added unnecessarily. Bakura immediately ceased his search for his Sharp Pointy Thing, which was sitting harmlessly on a display case across the room.

Yami blinked. "Since when have you been so vocal about these sorts of things?" he asked.

Jounouchi shrugged. "I dunno. Since someone had to be?"

"He has a point," Shadi conceded. "We're here because of the disruption in the balance of Shadow magic."

Marik blinked. "What? I'm just here because of my hikari."

"Oh, shut up and look impressive," Isis told him. "You know what's going on."

"Hang on, what the fuck? It's that stuff again?" Marik demanded. "Jesus fuck. We're out of here," he decided, grabbing Malik roughly and scooting backwards.

"Ma-_rik!"_ Eisei wailed. "We _need_ you!"

"Like fuck you do! I'm not going fucking transparent again!"

"Just stay _here!"_ Eisei ordered.

"Make me," Marik shot back.

Eisei reached for the Ankh. Marik promptly shut up and sat down. This was followed by everyone save for Shadi, Kaisei, and Malik looking admiringly at the redhead.

"Right, for those of you that don't know, there's a balance between yami and hikari," Shadi began. "If that balance is broken somehow – "

Jounouchi half-grinned. "Let me guess. We're screwed."

Shadi nodded. "Basically. And the balance that Ryou and his yami share is rapidly disintegrating. Therefore the only thing keeping Bakura alive is him drawing from every other yami, hence also physically drawing them to him. And since this connection has been established, every single one of us Item holders could croak at any given moment if we don't get this fixed. He'll drain us all dry, then die himself. And us modern holders won't fare much better," Shadi added.

The impact of this statement was dulled slightly by Malik's announcing, "I think I'm going to faint," and promptly doing so.

Marik stared at his hikari. "Shit," he remarked, poking Malik's hair. "Is he supposed to be doing that?"

Jounouchi briefly facepalmed, then went back over to Malik. "He looks as bad off as you used to be," he said over his shoulder to Bakura.

"That's because he's only snogged us," Bakura retorted. "Right?"

"Wait a minute, who did what?!" Marik demanded. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Ryou kissed me, absorbed a ton of my power, went berserk, and now is going on a psychopathic and nymphomaniacal rampage," Bakura listed off monotonously. "And above all, don't let him near you. Ever."

Marik blinked. "So does that mean I get an easy one-night stand if he finds me?"

Isis picked up a fluffy pen and threw it at Marik. "Sex fiend," she muttered.

"Well, now we know why I'm helping you," Yami said sarcastically to Bakura. "You owe me now."

Bakura simmered for a moment, then shot his best "I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!' look at Yami before stalking off into a corner to sulk.

"Did I just faint?" Malik asked suddenly from across the room.

"Yes," Jounouchi replied calmly.

"Fuck," Malik replied. "What'd I miss?"

"Not much, just the revelation that since Ryou kissed Bakura, he's turned into a deranged nympho," Jounouchi said. "But I think you figured that out for yourself."

"No shit," Malik retorted.

"I thought so. People!" he yelled. "Now that we're all awake and relatively coherent, can we find a way to get out of this bloody mess? I mean, that was the idea that prompted our coming here," he added solemnly.

"There is a way," Kaisei began thoughtfully. "It worked before, and it might work now, but there's a tiny problem," he said.

"And that would be?" Bakura prompted.

"It involves Ma'at's cooperation in restoring you to normalcy," Kaisei said quickly.

"Well, count that one right out," Bakura said, rolling his eyes.

"It also happens to be the only way I know of," Kaisei added.

There was a long pause.

"Tomb robber!" Yami finally howled.

"What the hell?" Bakura shot back.

"If you hadn't been so damn insolent all this time, we might all still be alive in twenty-four hours!" Yami screeched.

Bakura flopped back against the wall and slid to the ground. "Mymeef."

"Speak up," Yami barked.

One hand slammed against the wall, then the other as Bakura shoved himself away and to his feet. "I said I _know!_I know, I know, _I know!_ Now that we've all established I'm going to _die,_ let's just get _on_ with it!"

"You aren't going to die," Kaisei said sternly. "My pharaoh?"

"Yes?" Yami replied.

"Sit down, shut up, and don't interfere. It's not _your_ life on the line," Kaisei said nastily. "But if you don't let me handle this, it _will_ be."

"But you just said – "

"_I just said sit down and shut up!"_

Yami sat down and shut up.

"Listen," Kaisei said to Bakura. "I'm going to handle this myself. Remember, you now have the dubious honor of being _expected_ to do horrible, awful, unredeemable things. It's what you're for. You're someone's personal demon. You're not going to be judged as a human. You'll be fine. Now I can do this by myself, and probably should. It involves balancing the scales of destiny again, and fast," he informed the amassed group. "Sorry, Shadi, but I'd like to talk to my Lady myself. We'll need the yami and hikari of the Ring together, and I believe that will be all. Oh, and I'd like to be relatively close to where the first transfer took place," Kaisei concluded, sounding oddly businesslike.

"Oh, all that's easy, except for getting Ryou," Jounouchi said cheerfully. "So you don't need any of us?"

"I'm not helping you even if I could!" Malik burst out. "I'm not going near Ryou until everything's back to normal! Yeesh," he added with a shudder. "I'm not doing this again!"

"I won't need your help anyway," Kaisei said reassuringly. "But we will need Ryou – is that the hikari? Ryou," he repeated after confirmation.

"I can do that," Eisei volunteered.

"You?" Bakura asked, rolling his eyes. "The fanboy?"

Eisei smiled. "'The 'fanboy', as you call him, is also a yami with more power than you may ever have," he said softly. With that, he rose and opened the door to the basement. "Hello, little one, as my hikari calls you. I knew you'd be out there."

"And you're not even psychic?" Ryou asked with a charming, albeit bloody, smile. He was sitting on the top step of the stairs to the basement, still toying absently with the knife he'd stolen from Bakura. "You want to take away all I've become, is that it?"

Eisei looked thoughtful. "I'm not psychic, but they are, and I know how to be quiet," he remarked, nodding at the two almost identical girls sitting side by side on the desk. "And yes, I want to unmake what you have made yourself. I won't lie. I find it pointless, you know."

"I'm sure," Ryou said, and giggled. He wafted to his feet and stepped into the room, looking around. "Oh, Malik! You look..." He smiled. "Actually, you feel..."

Malik opted to cower behind the nearest person – namely his yami – and snarl, "I'm armed, I'm so armed, I swear to Sekhmet that I'm armed..." while waving the Millennium Rod threateningly.

"Better you than me!" Bakura said unthinkingly, immediately gaining Ryou's attention.

"Yami – "

Eisei then quickly smacked Ryou on the back of the head with the Millennium Ankh, then snapped, "Marionette Design!" as the boy crumpled to the floor wordlessly, eyes blank.

"I suppose if you restore his mind, it won't affect what I'm about to do," Kaisei said. "Thanks for _consulting_ me, idiot."

"I only had one chance," Eisei said with a shrug.

"What did you _do_ to him?!" Bakura screeched.

"Knocked him out and temporarily redesigned his personality," Eisei told him. He gestured with the Ankh. "Wake up," he said. Ryou's eyes flickered, then went back to their previous blankness as he rose to his feet. "Walk with me," Eisei ordered, moving towards the door, Ryou in tow. "Where are we going?" he asked, looking around helplessly.

Yami was staring at Ryou, as was Jounouchi.

Shadi looked at him and sighed. "You've both seen this before. He's not a zombie this time, nor is he a doll in a game. It's temporary. Isn't it, Eisei?" he called warningly.

"It'll be permanent if no one tells me where to go," Eisei said innocently.

Bakura got to his feet and stretched sulkily. "Come on, then," he said, leading the way to the door and shoving it open for the nearest person in a pseudo-polite manner.

"I'm not going!" Malik announced as Yami, Jounouchi, Shadi, Eisei, Ryou, and Kaisei began their exit.

"Then go home," Isis pointed out.

"Are there any psychopaths there?" Malik asked.

"Only the one you keep with you constantly," Aset informed them, earning a glare from Marik. "Oh, stop that, you know you like that moniker. Wait a moment," she added to Bakura, who had detoured back into the room to retrieve the butcher knife. "We have a question to ask you," she said, nodding at Isis.

"What?" Bakura asked suspiciously as Malik hastily cleared out as well. Marik followed, taking the time to relight a cigarette, deliberately exhale smoke in the room, then leave before Isis could do more than make a threatening move in his direction.

"What do you know about this?" Aset asked, proffering the Millennium Eye.

Bakura's eyes widened. "That's mine!" he said, making a grab for it with his free hand. Aset held it up out of his reach tauntingly and stepped out of range of the knife.

"Where did you get that?" Bakura demanded, forgetting his resolution to not betray himself.

"Out of the pharaoh's shirt," Aset replied.

"Bit of an odd place to keep it," Isis added thoughtfully. "Do you want it back?"

"I took it and it didn't blow me to the ends of the earth, so it's mine," Bakura said, hoping he sounded deranged enough to let them just give it to him and permit him to walk away unscathed.

"All right," Aset said surprisingly.

Bakura blinked. "Eh?"

"I said, all _right_. Take it. Don't get yourself killed and waste all this work. Do you realize all seven Items were in one room and you didn't make a single move to take any of the others?" Aset inquired.

Bakura's eyes went wide again. "Really? Shit! Hey, can you rewind time and – "

Aset merely glowered at him. "Bad tomb robber. No biscuit."

"Then why the hell did you bring it up?"

"I wanted to see the look on your face," Aset said carelessly.

"It was well worth it," Isis pitched in.

"_Sam em ab,_" Bakura muttered. "Both of you."

"So's your mother," Isis retorted.

"Or your father. Whichever," Aset added.

"Oh, shut up," Bakura snarled, wheeling to go as he shoved the Eye into his pocket.

"Bakura?" Aset said as the tomb robber reached the door.

"What _now_?"

"Good luck," Aset told him. "I can't See a damn thing past this ritual of Kaisei's, so wishing you luck is all I can do. Let Seshat be with you on this one."

"..." Bakura departed with the slam of the door.

"I think he meant 'thanks', but you never know," Isis said spiritedly. "It could have just as easily been 'fuck off, you prats'."

Aset rolled her eyes and sprawled back across the desk without another word, with some very...interesting...thoughts running through her mind.

"Yami! Get off my paperwork! I mean it! Yami, I – Yami? Why are you looking at me like...that...?"

The paperwork quickly became singularly uninteresting.

We grieve for the paperwork.

* * *

Fluffy: Yesss. Go forth and grieve.

**LFangor: **Malik!Pity!

**KeMu: **He was being low-key in the chapter.

**molten-amber: **Yep, I invented them...and the end of this is drawing close waaaaaaay too fast. slaps the story Bad! Stay! But I'm glad you like it!

**Liviana:** Ryou wants your phone number. ;;

**Froz Flame: **Mmmm, blood.

**Aithril the Elf-Maiden: **Freaky's good.

**Melissa: **Glomping is jumping on someone and hugging them insanely hard. It's a fangirl move, mostly. Watch. glomps Mokuba

**Alyssa-Anime-Angel: **You think so?

**Nadoko-Mika: **Malik's not happy. ;;

**Dark Millenia: **This feels relatively quick as far as updates go for me, so I hope you agree.

**Sky-Pirate-Ta**t: You thought _that_ was confusing? They're all here now...bwahaha...is juggling bouncy balls with the characters trapped inside

**Ryou's Gal: **There is never too much blood for angst. Ever.

**R Amethyst: **Squee! Fave-ness! glomps and gives pocky

**Bakura: **Cor. Identity crisis?

**higashikaze: **Er. Yes. Don't read this in public places. It could be dangerous, y'know.

**Jherrus: **I dunno, it's up to Ryou.

**Fyredra: **dances around with a knife

**Bakuraluva: **Um...pokes You all right there? If you die from complications arising from my fic, will you promise not to sue me? brandishes Disclaimer as a shield

Duel: O me. O poor me. Review.


	13. In Which There Is Gold Glitter

Fate: I like the way this ends now. Wasn't too happy with it before. But now I like it.

Disclaimer: is busily headbanging

* * *

**[12] In Which There Is Gold Glitter**

"You know, I always figured Ryou for the 'neat freak' kind of person," Jounouchi said, stopping dead in the doorway.

Bakura simply elbowed him aside defiantly and passed through the chaos without noticing that it was there. "Why?" he snarled.

Jounouchi blinked. "I dunno. It's just that he doesn't seem like a very messy person. Unless it's you?" he added after a pause, squinting at Bakura.

Bakura glared at him as Eisei edged himself and the still-catatonic Ryou around Jounouchi. "I, as an accomplished thief, do _not_ leave possessions lying around where anyone can take them from me once I managed to get my hands on them, idiot."

Jounouchi tilted his head to one side. "Very true. It must be advantageous for other people to be absentminded and messy, though, right?"

"What do you think?" Bakura snapped.

"I think you're stalling," Kaisei said mildly. "I can't understand why, but I believe that you are. It seems a little foolish, you know, since you gain nothing from your present state."

"You're going to use _that_ – " Bakura pointed at the Scales furiously, " – on me. Why the hell wouldn't I be stalling?"

"You could have your power back," Kaisei reasoned.

"What good is power going to do me if Am'mit eats me?!"

"She won't," Kaisei said. "Yet."

Bakura glowered at him. "I don't trust you."

"Do you have a choice in the matter?" Kaisei inquired.

"I could leave," Bakura pointed out.

"And abandon your hikari as a lifeless doll, subject to my brother's whims? You're even less intelligent than I thought," Kaisei muttered.

Bakura shot him a sulky look and turned his back pointedly. The he whipped around again. "Does _he_ have to be here?" he demanded, glaring at Yami.

Yami merely looked at Bakura. The two yamis then commenced in a staring contest, the occasional red spark flying through the air.

"He blinked," Jounouchi announced, pointing at Yami.

Shadi gently pushed Yami into the room and closed the door after him. "Kaisei, if you please..."

"It would help if you disenchanted the hikari," Kaisei remarked to Eisei.

"Aww," Eisei pouted. He tapped Ryou briskly on the head with the Ankh, then prudently backed off a step, as did everyone else. Jounouchi even went so far as to dive into the kitchen and peer suspiciously over the counter as Ryou blinked, stretched, and slowly looked around, meeting everyone's eyes deliberately.

Bakura was staring intently at the floor in order to avoid his hikari's eyes when he suddenly realized that a white-haired being had attached itself to him and was gazing up at him, lips parted just enough to show bloody, pointed teeth.

"Are you going to shove me away and scream?" Ryou breathed. Jounouchi ducked even farther down behind the counter. Yami also decided that it was time for a prudent retreat, and vanished behind the couch.

"That is what you expect me to do?" Bakura replied just as quietly. Ryou's cold hands snaked around his neck as he nodded. "I see."

"Do you?" Ryou inquired. They were now close enough to be eye to eye, if only Ryou would stand up straight rather than hang onto Bakura in a show of helplessness.

Silence.

"Yeah," Bakura finally snarled, jerking Ryou to balance on his own feet, then tilting his head slightly and biting his hikari hard enough to draw blood. He looked back up at his would-be mirror image as a drop of blood spilled from the end of his mouth.

"Was that _supposed_ to happen?" Jounouchi hissed audibly as Ryou stared openmouthed at his yami.

"Go with it," Kaisei replied, letting go of the Scales with a flourish. They floated in the air, glowing faintly and rotating around the center pole.

"They're going to try and balance us," Ryou murmured, steadfastly ignoring the blood seeping from his neck wound. As he spoke, a tiny cloud of grayish smoke sparkling with gold flecks appeared on one of the golden pans of the slowly rotating Scales.

"And if they don't succeed?" Bakura wondered aloud the thing that had haunted his mind for rather a while. He was almost too preoccupied to notice the smoke growing on the other pan of the Scales.

"Don't worry about it, because if they fail, life will still be beautiful," Ryou whispered, touching the blood at the edge of Bakura's lips. "My blood on your teeth." A smile crept up on his face as his teeth flashed. Searing pain briefly shot through Bakura as Ryou neatly reopened one of the cuts he'd made so long – _but it hadn't been so long, had it?_ – ago. "And your blood on mine...if you can call it blood," Ryou said thoughtfully. "It's sweet, you know, sweeter than anything I've ever tasted, but it's not cloying, if you know what I mean. The aftertaste is...mmm, well, only consider the bearer of the blood," Ryou insinuated with a lazy smile.

Bakura fought the very tomb-raiderly urge to run screaming into the wilderness and not come back for a good long time. He instead raised one hand to trace the wound he'd inflicted on Ryou, eliciting a suppressed hiss of pain and a wince from the other boy as his finger traveled in lazy circles around the injury. Finally he withdrew the offending digit and licked his hand clean of the blood that had spilled down it.

"You really shouldn't be shedding blood like that," Jounouchi advised from his hiding place.

"Shut up," Yami suggested as both yami and hikari's eyes flicked to the kitchen, then back to each other. "Hurry up," he added to Kaisei.

"Do you want to be caught in the spell and be torn in two because it doesn't know which of them you belong to?" Kaisei replied out of the side of his mouth as he spun the Scales more quickly with mere waves of his fingers. "It doesn't matter if you're an innocent bystander or not. Now calm down and let me work."

"Mweep!" Jounouchi agreed feebly.

Shadi and Eisei looked equally disturbed. Eisei tossed Kaisei the Ankh, disappearing when his brother touched the Item. As Kaisei donned the gold pendant, Shadi also vanished.

"I don't suppose I could leave now, could I?" Yami inquired.

Kaisei looked rather strained. "No. Now stuff it, my pharaoh."

Yami was more than happy to comply and watch Ryou and Bakura's tête-à-tête, as it was at that moment getting rather interesting.

Ryou had by then hooked one arm around Bakura's neck and had tucked the other in his yami's back pocket. Bakura's teeth were inches away from the hole he'd just bitten in Ryou's neck, and he had one hand clutching the cord of the Ring where it met Ryou's collarbone and the other pressing his hikari against him at the waist. Had Yami been in the fangirl black market, he would have been filthy rich in a matter of days.

"Why all this attention all of a sudden?" Ryou asked, his whisper almost sultry. He turned his head as much towards Bakura as he could manage and licked his lips. "Did you just lose the will to resist me?"

"No," Bakura replied, his eyes almost closed. "I just found the courage to take you back."

Ryou laughed. The high, eerie sound echoed unnaturally in the small room. "You _are_ my yami."

"Precisely," Bakura answered with a flash of teeth. "I am yours, or so you think. And I think that you...are _mine_," he added so quietly that he wasn't even sure that Ryou could hear. He licked teasingly at the blood pooling on Ryou's shoulder. "I'm consummating you, aren't I?"

"You make me perfect," Ryou whispered. "Alone, we are blemished and unfit for company. Together..."

"We could rule the world?" Bakura suggested mockingly. "How many times did I offer to lay the world at your feet, only to have you refuse in tears?"

"I've changed," Ryou said simply.

"And so have I," Bakura retorted. "But it doesn't matter."

"There we go," Kaisei said as the Scales suddenly blazed golden, shooting out pillars of white and black indiscriminately. "O Ma'at, having heard these two who are one converse, have you gleaned the necessary information for their Balancing?"

As far as a good portion of the rest of the world was concerned, time had frozen. They couldn't hear Kaisei speaking, nor could they speak themselves. They weren't at all aware that time had stopped, and never would be.

However, in places that probably didn't quite count as 'the rest of the world' but were lumped in there anyway, there were still some who could answer. The white and black lights parted neatly off to either side, with the gold flecks hovering around them.

"This priest of your Order thanks you, O Blessed Ma'at," Kaisei said respectfully, touching the eye on the Scales, which had mercifully stopped rotating. "By the power that is invested in me, the enlightenment that I was given by Ma'at my Patroness, and my determination, I will restore the Balance to the cosmos." He put a finger on each pan, watching as the white swirled into one and the black into the other. When he took his fingers away, the pans still balanced perfectly. He sighed internally with relief, then raised his hands over the Scales. "The Balance has been restored, and may all who have been affected live on in peace, health, prosperity, and above all, fairness." He closed his eyes and brought his hands together swiftly. "It is noted," he announced.

Blackness crashed down on Kaisei, followed by a soft rain of golden dust.

The Scales fell, released from the power that had kept them hovering before their yami master. Once they touched the ground, time snapped back into normalcy.

Kaisei's eyes dropped shut. "It worked," he whispered, grinning, as he used the last of his strength to remove the Ankh. "It worked." Luckily enough for Kaisei, Shadi managed to jump out of his soul room and catch his unconscious yami. Eisei also popped back into reality to aid his hikari.

Jounouchi peered over the countertop warily, then hopped over it with an odd grace, showering gold dust everywhere. His hair and eyelashes glittered with it.

Yami also emerged from his hiding place in a shower of gold. He then began furiously brushing at his clothes in a vain effort to get them relatively back to normal.

Bakura and Ryou were on opposite ends of the room, having broken apart almost instantaneously upon their reanimation. Ryou was huddled in the empty fireplace and Bakura was under the table.

"Um," Jounouchi said, crouching to peer under the table.

"Yeah?" Bakura snarled, reaching for his knives.

"Oh, _stop_ that," Jounouchi said authoritatively. Bakura froze. "I think that we're going to leave, unless you want those bite marks seen to," he added.

Bakura put one hand to the gaping wound protectively. "We'll be fine!"

"I hope so," Jounouchi replied, standing. "I wish you luck." He looked over at the fireplace.

Ryou was curled up in the most shadowy corner possible, tears coursing soundlessly down his face.

Yami started towards Ryou, but was halted by the thud of a knife embedding itself in a nearby bookshelf. "Leave. Him. Alone," Bakura said, voice barely above a whisper.

Yami turned his head to look back at Bakura. "Why?"

Bakura closed his eyes. "Just get _out_."

"Yami," Jounouchi said softly. "Let's go. Let's just leave them alone for a while."

"I don't trust – " Yami began.

Jounouchi cut in deftly without any obvious effort. "It doesn't matter because you don't understand. Now go home. Yuugi's probably waiting for you."

"Yuugi!" Yami's eyes widened and he turned for the door, swiftly collecting Eisei, Shadi, and their unconscious yami and marching them all out the door.

Bakura stared at Jounouchi. "How the hell – ?"

"Have I managed to pull things off like that during this entire chaotic...thing?" Jounouchi smiled mischievously. "Allow me to put all your suspicions to rest, but you must promise not to tell anyone but Ryou."

Bakura nodded. "Secrets keep you alive."

"In the proverbial sense, yes. I've been Seto Kaiba's boyfriend for eighteen months running. I pick up on little talents like that," Jounouchi said smugly. With that, he turned and walked out of the apartment.

Bakura wasted very little time in gaping, and instead scrambled across the floor without bothering to get up. "Ryou. Ryou!"

"Don't touch me!" Ryou whimpered, pressing back against the fireplace wall. "I don't want to hurt you more! Get away from me, quick, before you get hurt!"

Bakura decided to be somewhat proactive, and reached out and took hold of Ryou's good shoulder. "Hikari..."

"You're different to me," Ryou said, stiffening. "You're..."

Bakura sighed impatiently. "Oh, shut up," he growled, bodily dragging Ryou out of the fireplace.

Ryou yelped as he fell to the floor in front of Bakura, then tried to scramble back up and away. This plan was thwarted by the very respectable hold that Bakura had gained on Ryou's upper arms. "Let me go!"

Bakura glowered at him. "No. You're acting different too. You'd never plead with me. Change happens, get used to it or get screwed over," he said ungracefully. "I'd prefer you get used to it, unless it's me doing the – never mind," he cut himself off as he thought aloud.

Ryou stared at him, having caught this addendum. "You...?"

Bakura blinked. "Me?"

"You don't hate me?" Ryou blurted out in a rush.

"I never said I did," Bakura retorted. "Never, _ever._ I've done everything you ever asked of me."

"You tried to _kill_ me! You tried to kill my _friends!"_

"I only did what you asked!" Bakura yelled. _"_I never deliberately put you in harm's way! Just out of _my_ way!"

"You never wanted me!" Ryou shrieked. "You wanted me to die!"

"I'd been dying without you!" Bakura howled back. "_Dying_, you skinny little mortal _idiot!_" Deep breath. _"How_ many times have I died for you?"

"You've taken my body...taken me against my will...used me..." Ryou hiccuped, swiping away tears angrily.

"And _why_ was it against your will?" Bakura snarled, leaning forwards. "I've never done a thing but to _protect_ you, and to _avenge_ myself!"

"The Monster World thing – "

"I had to send you somewhere – "

"On Duelist Kingdom – "

"Do you _really_ think the pharaoh had the ability to swap us? The Eye could have, but – "

"In Battle City – "

"I carked it there, too, in case you hadn't noticed!" Bakura snapped. "And who attacked you while you were defenseless and I was half-dead? Hell, not even _Marik_ went after you to get rid of me. No, it was the _pharaoh_ who figured, well, what the hell, better get both of them while I can!"

"But you deserted me to – "

"_I can be beaten too!"_ Bakura screamed. "I'm not perfect! I'm _broken_!"

"And then at the church – "

"Oh, _gods!"_ Bakura sat back from Ryou. "I'm not the fucking pharaoh!" he snarled through the hands covering his face. "I'm not the high-and-mighty all-powerful smartass that he is. Get it through your head that I've been doing my damndest to protect you and get revenge on him simultaneously, and it _isn't easy._ I'm not the perfect protector. I'm worthless at it. _Worthless_. But you kept me." Shuddering breath. "You kept me."

Ryou very slowly reached out. Bakura made a strangled snarling noise, forcing Ryou to withdraw his hand slightly. Then the slimmer boy finally touched the half-shattered spirit on the forehead. "I kept you," Ryou said, quite clearly, "because I wanted to."

The tension flew from Bakura, who leaned into his hand with an exhausted sigh. "I'm so tired..." he whispered.

Ryou took his hand away slowly. "You should go."

Bakura looked up at him, nodded once, and vanished.

The remaining white-haired figure tore the Ring from his neck, flung it across the room, and collapsed to the floor in a welter of heartbroken sobs.

* * *

Fluffy: busily dancing Oi, we hitting any heartstrings yet?

**Lyn/Lin: **Thank you!

**Nadako-Miaka: **twitch Gah. Sorry about that.

**happy yaoi lover:** This calls for an 'OMG ::wub::'

**Queen-Of-Demon-Dragons: **No one else thinks Ryou's a complete and utter loony.

**Dark Crystal Maiden: **Thaaaaaaaank-ooooooo!

**Melissa: **pounces on trophy Shiny!

**KeMu: **runs out to drag Malik back kicking and screaming He's fun!

**Saturn Imp: **Cursing is bliss.

**Froz Flame: **Nope--but next chapter is the epilogue. Le sigh.

**yukoma:** Believe me, he regrets it.

**BakaNeko-Chan: **Sorry about the late updates. The plotbunnies went on strike.

**Kitten: **Glad to have been of entertainment.

**Gyakutenno Megami: **Bah. Silly people.

**summer psycho:**Oo...faves? Me? faints

**Yami no Ryuzaki:**Spiffles. I like that word!

**Isis Hotep:** Your friend will just have to live as a deprived soul.

**Liviana: **He's ba-ack!

Duel: Moo. What? Not like I have a point or anything.


	14. epilogue: Shining

Fate: Bai baiS!

Disclaimer: What?

* * *

**[epilogue] Shining**

Things actually kind of went back to normal for Ryou Bakura. Hell, they even went past what he considered normal and into even more normal territory. Well, there was the slightly odd behavior of his yami and friends of late, but that could all be correctly blamed on his own odd behavior without too much guesswork being involved.

So, with a sigh, Ryou decided to complete the normalcy of it all, and go off to school after a weekend of deep recovery. He'd even gone to the extent of putting the Ring back on under his clothes. As there was nary a peep from Bakura's soul room, he figured all was well and headed out.

He wandered past Malik's house, it being en route to school anyway, and waved to the blonde leafing idly through the newspaper as he sat on the stoop, completely ignoring the fact that the rest of the general teenage population was going to school.

Malik looked up. "Hey – oh. Oh, _shit_!" He immediately leapt to his feet and fled into the garage.

Ryou blinked. "...oops." _Mental note to self: Call Malik. Wait, wait, bad idea! Uh...write a letter? Talk to him when he can't get away? Send a message through Isis? Somehow reassure him that I'm harmless? Something..._

Pondering this, he once more set off for school, idly swinging his briefcase at the legs of passerby and seeing who tripped.

He stopped at the downtown drugstore and stared blankly at the darkened windows.

_I've come a long way from terrified whimpering hikari to whatever the hell I was back to...well, I don't know what I am now. I'm not afraid of yami, since I think he's more afraid of me at this point, but I'm not...eesh. Ew. Not going to think about what I was. It's just hard to be afraid again, but if I'm not afraid...?_

_Oh well. I can think about this during nap time – er, calc. Yes. Calculus, not nap time. Oh, who am I kidding?_ Ryou smiled to himself, shook his head, and once more set off for school, this time at a run. _I'm going to be late!_

Within minutes, he managed to drown himself in the vast hordes of uniformed students, keeping his head down and avoiding anyone he knew. This tactic worked for roughly forty seconds.

"Ryou!"

With a stifled sigh, Ryou spun to face Yuugi. "Yes?"

"You're okay! I mean, you're really okay! And not like you're on pot and some aphrodisiac at the same time. Are you _sure_ you're okay?"

Ryou turned a very odd shade of magenta and sweatdropped. "I'm fine. Thank you," he said, eyes darting around for an escape route. "I, uh, I have to get to, uh, class...yeah...class...uh, I'll talk to you later..." With those stammered words, he fled in a cloud of embarrassment. _Omigod omigod omi-fucking-GOD!_ He noted briefly that he seemed to have retained an ability to curse freely, then went on to wallow in humiliation once more._ How am I ever going to live this down? Those things I did...oh my god...this is worse than I thought it would be, he concluded with a shudder. Class now. With people who don't know what I was up to all weekend. Yes. Class now_.

Ryou promptly did the smart thing, and walked straight into the wall next to his classroom door, after which he collapsed in a swirly-eyed heap to the floor.

Let us all give forth with cheer for Ryou's ability to be utterly humiliated and yet function like a normal human being.

[-]

"Ryou! You're alive! I win the bet!"

Ryou stared into the racks of chemicals set before him and began mentally listing all the reasons why he shouldn't pretend the last bit of his weekend had never happened and he should whip out his Earl of Demise and set it on Jounouchi. Prominent among them was _Eeep! Nononononooooo! _Bad_ Ryou! Very bad!_

"What bet?" he asked the chemicals.

"The one I had on with Yami," Jounouchi said smugly. "He said you'd be a bloody pulp today. I said you'd be fine. He's quite dense in that respect, you know."

"What respect?" Ryou asked, still not daring to face Jounouchi for fear of an irrational reaction.

"Oh, you know. Snogging over beating the crap out of someone," Jounouchi said airily. "I should know."

Ryou choked and contemplated pouring the very flammable substance at the end of the rack over Jounouchi's head. If it got lit on fire, so be it. The Bunsen burners were in need of repair like that, and if it took a human sacrifice to get the school on it...

_Argh! Very, very bad Ryou! No kill!_

"There has been no snogging going on," Ryou said, forcing his voice to stay relatively level.

"'Course not! Bakura's practically in snog-shock, here," Jounouchi answered carelessly. "You were busy this weekend."

Ryou hastily tilted his head forward somewhat, allowing his hair to obscure his burning face. "I know," he said in a rather small and squeaky voice. And I've got another hour and forty minutes of this hell...

Jounouchi's hand fell lightly on his shoulder. "You know I'm teasing you. Or maybe you don't. But I am. C'mon, Yuugi and I are like the only people who know about this here at school. I'm not telling anyone else."

"Thank you," Ryou said devoutly. "Could you do me a favor and let Malik know I'm normal again? He's a bit skittish."

"I can imagine," Jounouchi muttered. "Malik is high-strung, you know. He'll get over it."

"Now there's an understatement," Ryou replied.

Jounouchi made an affirmative noise. "I'll leave you alone before you start pouring chemicals over my head."

Ryou blinked and began to stammer out protests. "But...wait, I didn't...I mean, I..."

Jounouchi laughed and brushed him off with the airy wave of a hand. "Oh, please. I see that expression on Seto's face about nine times a week on average. I know exactly what it means. See you."

With that, he sauntered back to his seat and was immediately glowered at by the rather annoyed teacher, who considered conversation during lab time to be utter blasphemy.

Ryou stared blankly at the racks of chemicals, then began writing down procedures with yet another internal sigh.

[-]

Having survived his school day without dying of humiliation, Ryou managed to fight his way out from the throngs of students and begin heading down his usual after-school, slightly longer walk down the back streets of Domino City.

It was quite a peaceful walk, really, with very little traffic and not too many other people.

This tranquility lasted all of fifteen minutes. Ryou was practically home by that point, and figured he was all set for the day as far as being traumatized by the public went.

The universe figured he wasn't. However, it neglected to inform Ryou.

So, of course, he wasn't really expecting to be pulled back by his hair into a dark alley.

[-]

Bakura had taken advantage of being able to leave his soul room without encountering Ryou and was lazing around in the sort of semi-awake coma he preferred during daylight, idly sharpening his pet knife and waiting with some discomfort for Ryou to get home. Awkward silence was reigning king between them, and seemed to have comfortably set up court in their home. If it made itself any more a part of their household, it might even have gotten its own soul room.

Bakura also was totally unaware of any impending doom, and was also taken by surprise when Ryou made a startled squeaky noise inside his head.

Hikari?

/Eeep!/

This was accompanied by the sound of a metal trash can flying violently into the side of their house. Bakura immediately snatched up his dagger, put a handful of cards between his teeth, and began climbing out of the window, keeping one eye on the Ring as he did so for an indication of his hikari's whereabouts.

_If he's gone all psycho again I swear there's going to be some hell to pay with that judge,_ Bakura mentally vowed as he touched down on the ground. _Now where's my hikari?_

The Ring stirred, then pointed left. Bakura immediately sprinted off in that direction, then skidded to a screeching halt after about twenty steps.

"...the fuck? There's two of them!"

"There's only one of me, and you'd better start thanking the gods for that," Bakura snarled around his mouthful of cards as two of the five harassing Ryou peeled off to face him. He spared a brief awed glance for Ryou spitting blood into the face of one of his attackers, then spat the cards out and picked his favorite. "Man-Eater Bug!"

"What the – HOLY SHIT!" This panicked scream was quickly accompanied by other such vocalizations, as well as a few pained and/or terrified ones. One of the three remaining rallied enough to throw a punch at Ryou –

And was met with a screaming face in a rope of darkness, hovering just above where Ryou had ducked.

"Morphing Jar," Ryou hissed, and scrambled away on his hands and knees towards his yami.

Bakura was almost too busy gaping at Ryou to field the knife assault on him, but not quite. Very quickly the knife fight turned into a free-for-all organ harvest as Bakura decided to entertain himself at his attacker's own peril. The final one began to turn and flee.

And found himself facing what appeared to be the Grim Reaper.

"Reaper of the Cards," Ryou said, flicking the card through his fingers and tucking it back into his pocket when the Reaper was finished. "We done here?"

Bakura did a very handsome goldfish imitation momentarily, then finally stammered, "Are...are you sure you're cured?"

Ryou blinked at him, this being the first real conversation they'd had since the night in the fireplace. Awkward silence arrived and decided to make itself very well known in order to make up for its inactivity all day. "I...um...I...do you, uh, want me to...to be like I was...you know, before all this? I...I don't know if I can go back, you know, I mean, everything looks all..."

Bakura waited for Ryou to stutter into silence, looked at him meditatively for a few more moments, then finally looked at the wreckage of the five attackers. "What do you want to do with them?"

Ryou blinked once more. "Oh. Bugger. Bodies. Um..." He pulled a full array of cards out of his pocket and began going through them again. "Morphing Jar, Morphing Jar...I used it once, I know it's in here..."

"No, no, I got it," Bakura said, raising his eyebrows briefly as the bodies shimmered and then vanished. The Ring glinted conspicuously as he continued, "I meant...you usually are kind of...averse to violence, shall we say."

Ryou, for the third time, blinked and looked confused. "I don't care."

"You don't care," Bakura repeated.

Ryou nodded. "I mean, I don't want to do this every day, but, I mean – mmph!"

Bakura had apparently grown tired of Ryou trying to worm out of this conversation, and had decided to end it on his own terms, as per Ryou's way of ending arguments.

The pair broke apart for air after what each considered much too short a time and stared blankly at each other, both thinking much too rapidly for their expressions to follow.

"You...are still fucking amazing," Bakura finally breathed.

Ryou looked confused. "Huh?" Realization set in. "Oh," he squeaked, and turned brilliant red. "You...you dared..."

"I figured you're fixed," Bakura said carelessly, bracing himself on the wall that Ryou was using as a full-body support. "'Sides, I initiated it this time, and I want you staying the way you are."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, hang on, is this you want to fuck me senseless because I've got talent or is this you actually like me? 'Cause going by your attitude on Friday, this is the former, here," Ryou said mutinously.

"Would you care so much if it was?" Bakura asked curiously.

"Um. No – I mean, yes, of course, I would...oh, damn it, no, because it's better than anything else I could reasonably expect from you!" Ryou yelled into his face.

Bakura blinked. "You're lying, sort of."

Ryou glared at him. "Yes. I am."

"Look, going by your attitude on Friday, you don't want me except for sex either!" Bakura flared up. "Hell, why don't we continue back onto Saturday and Sunday, too?"

Ryou's eyes dropped away as Awkward Silence finally located the pair and made itself known again.

_...bugger,_ Bakura thought as Ryou brushed past him and picked up his school bag.

"Yes. Let's go back to Saturday and Sunday, when you didn't want me at all except to use my body. Just like normal."

A faint fizzling from the Ring hidden under his shirt signified that his yami had given up on trying to talk to him and had retreated to his soul room to sulk. Ryou scrubbed one hand over his neon face, then trudged back down the alley and up into his room. He tossed his bag onto his bed, then turned to his laptop.

And found his yami sitting in his computer chair, glaring at him.

"Before you ask, you were so distracted that you wouldn't have noticed if I took you to the Shadow Realm and back, so that's how I got out here without you realizing it," Bakura snapped. "Sit."

"No," Ryou answered.

Bakura ignored this. "I told you why...why I've done everything I've done. I've told you why I did what I did for every topic you brought up. And you still want me gone." He tilted his head up defiantly. "All right, then. Wish me away. Take the Ring off, flush it down the toilet, get rid of it in any way you choose. Melt it down! Free all the souls in it! Burn it, bury it, throw it out the window! I won't come back if I know you don't want me!"

Ryou very composedly walked over to Bakura, pulled him to his feet, and shoved him hard against the nearest wall.

"Ow," Bakura breathed, wincing. "Or beat the shit out of me. Whatever you want," he added, sounding slightly winded.

Ryou shook his head. "Shut up," he said dispassionately.

Bakura shut up.

"You know what I really want to do with you?" Ryou said meditatively, toying with the Ring on Bakura's chest. "You want oblivion. You want to be left alone. That's not what I want for you."

Bakura began feeling some creeping feelings of apprehension seeping through the pain, shock, and horror already firmly rooted in his mind. "What do you want, then?"

"I said," Ryou began, clapping a hand over Bakura's mouth, "shut up." He smiled. "What do I want?"

Bakura just stared at him.

"You," Ryou finished, taking his hand away and replacing it with his lips. And then his tongue. And occasionally his teeth.

_ohmygod i think i'm dying..._

Ryou pulled back and smiled at Bakura. It was a smile, but it wasn't the normal, nice one. It was something else entirely.

And it didn't hurt that it was dead sexy.

"Well?" Ryou prompted.

Bakura thought about what he could be doing at the moment.

"Ooof! Hey, my homework!"

"You really want to do your calculus?" Bakura taunted, barely sparing an upside-down glance at the bag on the floor, having knocked it flying from the bed.

"I have more interesting things to do," Ryou replied, bracing himself with both hands, as he was pinning his yami by the shoulders and was sprawled across him.

"So tell me," Bakura said, stopping Ryou inches away from his face. "Are you back to normal?"

Ryou giggled. "Fuck...no..."

Bakura smiled. "You have no idea how much I loved that voice. More than anything else, perhaps."

"Care to be proven wrong?" Ryou breathed.

"Go ahead...make my day," Bakura replied. "And do that biting thing again. I like that."

"Mmm. This?"

"...mmhm..."

Who needs calculus, anyway?

**[...and it's like every time i turn around, i fall in love and find my heart face down and where it lands is where it should...]**

* * *

Fluffy: Doot dododododo doot dodododo doo d'doo doo...

**Kitten: **pets Aww...don't be. There's plenty more fun stories, many of which have lots of Ryou and Bakura!

**Evil Chibi Malik: **Faves list! Thank you so much! glomps

**Froz Flame: **Go ahead and IM me. (slainwallflower) Poke me to update and stuffs. Hee. I'm so glad you enjoyed this!

**shitsumon: **Hmmm...others to corrupt like he's corrupted...Malik, say?

**Lylli and Nezumi Riddle: **watches the two yamis get dragged off into the wilderness Keep an eye out for those rabid hikaris, now. They'll go right for your ankles.

**Nadako-Miaka: **There's a sequel (A Light Story) and a prequel (Taking Death's Hand)

**yukoma: **He just keeps doing that, eh?

**Rogue Solus:** They were being nice?

**Panda X. Bear:** Evil!Yuugi?

**Princess Flame: **Live in fear. Mwahahaha. And we sadists and sadist-lovers shall take over the world! Whee!

**BakaNeko-Chan:** Let us go forth and pelt Yami with rotting produce.

**happy yaoi lover: **stares with shiny covetous eyes Want...plots to steal

**Liviana: **Ain't it just? grins

**Sailor Comet: **checks to make sure Isis hasn't lost/given away/misplaced the Tauk She's psychic, ladies and gentlemen...

**forever fallen: **Well, now it's over...and Fate's getting all happy that you like it. Crazy girl. rolls eyes

**Fyredra: **Hmm...want help in placing webcams and the like?

**Psychopathic Sixth Grader:** Watch out for aLS!

**R Amythest: **Yeek! Ooops! blushes Silly me. Sorrysorry! Thank you so much for reviewing! gives pocky and a plushie of sweet'n'innocent Ryou

**Sugar Goose: **Dude. Lookit the yami go bouncing with elation from the fave. watches Fate with trepidation

**Sage Kaley:** ...whoa. That is...trippy. Hey, plenty of fics for you to sample.

**Dragona 2007: **Mmm, psychosis. The best excuse for everything...and I know how to make excuses...

**Lady Wolf Moon: **Yeah, it helps that we actually followed the Egyptian religion before she started doing all this writing stuff. Makes it easier.

**Sky-Pirate-Tat: **Continuing!

**QueenOfGames: **Never fear, Evil!Ryou will live on with us forever...in many, many fics...

**someone you know: **Oo Meep...who are you? You don't act/type/phrase things like anyone I know who would choose to remain anonymous. mutters Watch it be someone I should know right off, ne? blinkblink You've successfully scared me...hang on, how did you _find_ me? hides

**Isis Hotep: **Aww, pity that. Anyway, I think I went over the 'hour' limit. Ooops. Sorry. Here it be!

**Marik 83: **Behold the insanity!

**Alyssa-Anime-Angel: **Mmm, fluffiness. purrs

**higashikaze:** Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one too.

**Saturn Imp: **He's normal? Wait a...double-takes

**KeMu: **Malik: Mmmph mmmrrr meeeeeep!

**Jherrus: **No more snogging? Hah. Just you wait. g

Duel: Look. It's over. Have you reviewed yet?


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